


Tell Me I'm a Bad Man

by bonerthatiusedtoknow



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Barebacking, F/F, F/M, Gang Violence, Prohibition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:33:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23930872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonerthatiusedtoknow/pseuds/bonerthatiusedtoknow
Summary: Prohibition era bootlegger mafia Fic. Frank runs a huge bootlegging operation in New Jersey. Problems arise when he infringes on a rival gang's territory, run by an equally crazy Gerard Way.
Relationships: Bob Bryar/Ray Toro, Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Frank Iero/Jamia Nestor, Jamia Nestor/Brian Schechter, Kristin Blanford/Mikey Way
Comments: 24
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on some criminal activities of Francesco Ioele (AKA Frankie Yale), an Irish gang called The White Hand Gang, and some of their many associates.  
> Warnings for offensive slag terms for immigrants in the 20s. They in no way reflect the my own personal feelings.

It was the year 1921. Prohibition did a pretty good job of creating new and exciting opportunities for illegal business ventures, but not an excellent job of doing much else. Since alcohol had been declared illegal, the demand for it seemed to have quadrupled—a near perfect scenario for business minded individuals of loose morals. Enter, one Frank Anthony Iero Jr. Over the last year, Frank had made quite the name for himself at the ripe old age of twenty-two, rearing the most successful bootlegging and racketeering operation in the state of New Jersey. And for good reason. They weren’t the largest in numbers by any means, but they had influence in spades. By that point there wasn’t a bar, restaurant, brothel, or fucking ice cream shop that Frank didn’t have his hands in. And as if that wasn’t enough, Iero owned and operated a goddamn _funeral home_ too, so a person couldn’t even die in this town without Frank being involved. That was precisely what kept him on top, kept police — well, the one’s he wasn’t paying off—off his ass when cash seemed to materialize in his hands out of thin air. They could suspect whatever they liked, but Frank funneled all of his money into his many connections and they couldn’t actually _prove_ a damned thing. 

It was good. Better, really, than Frank ever thought he’d have growing up on the streets as a dirty pickpocket with a switchblade. He didn’t have any intention of letting it get away from him, either, so when trouble popped up—usually rival Italian gangs looking to usurp his throne—he squashed them all down as swiftly and mercilessly as crunching a bug beneath his heel. Not that it kept people from trying. If anything, the more word got around about the young, hot-tempered, Italian gangster with the pretty face, the more hungry competition rose to meet it. If anyone was asking Frank’s opinion, that was good too. 

It went on like that for a while, Frank making deals and pissing people off as easy as breathing, making examples of anyone who maybe mistook his youth for ineptitude. By May, his operation accounted for a solid seventy-five percent of all the alcohol sales within a hundred miles with his sights set firmly on the other twenty-five. Ray, his right hand, told him that he was crazy to try, that he should leave it alone and let some of the smaller gangs have their piece of the pie. Ray wanted to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, always there to bring Frank back down when he thought Frank’s head was too high in the clouds. But, well, Frank had always been a crazy motherfucker, and nothing in Frank’s life had ever been too ‘crazy’ to not do when he got the inclination. 

Which was why, on one scorching day in July, Frank found himself in quite the proverbial pickle. He had charted his course to a few clubs in Greenpoint earlier in the month hoping to draw in more revenue from New York—strictly East Side Gang territory— and made them an offer that no other bootlegger in the area could hope to compete with. Honestly, it wasn’t even a big score, not like it was Harlem or anything, but something in Frank had wanted to fuck with those scraggily bearded Irish boys just to show them that he _could_. He was not exactly regretting the decision now, but he did—he admitted to himself— regret wearing his favorite suit out to brunch which only allowed room for two guns and a couple backup cartridges of ammunition. 

Frank was lamenting this particular wardrobe choice when a bullet sailed over his head and lodged into the flamingo swinging above him. He groaned inwardly, he had _just_ had that sign remade. Fucking neanderthals. 

“Come on out, Frankie,” a voice sang over the gunfire, teasing. “I just wanna talk.”

Frank grinned to himself, loading the second cartridge he’d been carrying into his colt. It had been a couple months since he’d seen any good action, and though he’d been expecting some kind of retaliation for taking the clubs, he would never have put his money on 11:00 AM the next morning, in the middle of the street, in his own neighborhood where his friends outnumbered theirs twenty to one. Points for a steel set of _cogliones_ , Frank thought. “I can hear you fine from there,” he called back, voice casual, as he pulled a mirror from his pocket, trying to use it to see around the Roadster he was ducking behind. He had counted about ten of them when they had first piled out of a couple of dark buicks—closer to seven now, Frank noted with more than a little satisfaction. A frail looking blonde aimed his barrel towards the car from behind a trash can. Frank dropped him. Six. 

“I like to look a man in the eye when I do business.” 

Frank crooked the mirror in the direction the voice had come from. Bingo. “You want to talk business, call my office. I’ll have my secretary pencil you in,” he said. The guy had dark hair, long and a little greasy from what Frank could see in the palm sized glass. He didn’t look like one of the Irish boys, though. Frank was a good shot, but he didn’t think he could make that one without stretching his neck out enough to get it shot off. Instead, he aimed at a ruddy haired goliath that had been slowly inching his way towards the car. The giant collapsed on the ground with a resounding “thud.” Frank called, “Timbeeeeer,” gleefully as more bullets peppered the side of the car. Five.

“That was my best lieutenants, Frank,” the man said disapprovingly. He could see a pout tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I suggest that you start screening for brains rather than girth, then.” The guy actually _giggled_. Frank snorted and tried to clean a smudge off of the mirror with his tie. Then, because Frank couldn’t actually continue to refer to him as ‘the man’ in his own mind, he called out again. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.” Last Frank heard, the East Side Gang was being run by Pelissier, who could work up a decent ambush if he really set his mind to it, but this guy rounded up a pack of Micks and dropped them in Frank’s hometown in broad daylight. That took balls that Pelissier just did not possess. He held the mirror out again, tilting it around when he couldn’t get the guy in focus. 

“It’s Gerard.” Frank startled so hard that he knocked his head against the trunk of the car. The guy, _Gerard_ , had managed to sneak up on him, popping up on the side of the car facing the street, head poked out around the back so that his voice was only a foot from Frank’s ear. And he was laughing.

“Mother _fucker_!” Frank spat, but he already had both guns trained on Gerard’s head. Of course, as luck would have it, there were also two pointed right back at him. “Motherfucker,” he said again, but this time kind of awed. “How the fuck did you get over here so fast?”

Gerard smirked and tapped a finger to the side of his nose. It was a little comical with the gun still firmly in his grasp and all. “Nice to finally meet you face to face. I’ve heard so many things.”

Frank hummed shortly to himself, taking in Gerard's weird pointed nose, wide mouth, and big hazel eyes. He was almost feminine, especially with his dark hair hanging around his face like that. “Can’t say the same about you, I’m afraid,” he said, pursing his lips, “I hadn’t been made aware that a blood traitor was leading around the herd before today. Otherwise I would have taken more than just a few clubs from you.”

The teasing expression on Gerard’s face tightened into a sneer, his finger flexing on the gun in his left hand. Frank looked pointedly down at his own guns and raised an eyebrow. “You’re awfully concerned about blood for an orphan, Frankie.”

“Keep hanging around with the likes of them and you will be too.” It wasn’t a threat, just life. At least if one of their people wanted to off a guy, he knew it was coming first. A fella didn’t just wake up dead one day thinking the guy that capped him was a friend. 

“Your man Toro know you're a blood elitist?” Gerard spat the words out like venom. Like Frank gave two shits about interracial relations instead of the fact that one of his own had chosen to take up arms with those goons.

“Shut the fuck up. Toro _is_ blood,” Frank hissed. As good as, anyway. Blood in all the ways that mattered. “If I were you I’d say what you came here to say and hit the road. You’re already down by half. _Toro_ has heard about this already, I promise you.”

“Strike a nerve?” Gerard asked, sweetly. He sighed then, though, heavily through his nose and seemed to deflate just a bit. “And we were having such a nice conversation.” The guy cycled through emotions like Dewees went through broads. Watching it made Frank a little dizzy. 

“Pal, if it’s just company that you’re after, you are in the wrong place.”

He didn’t miss the way Gerard’s gaze washed over his face contemplatively before he said, “We want a partnership.”

Frank laughed. “Not a fucking chance.”

“You haven’t even heard my offer yet.” It wasn’t a whine, but it was a close thing. “You can’t just say no.”

“I can and I am. No.”

“Why not?” Gerard demanded. He sounded petulant like a child who wanted to know why they couldn’t have cake for dinner. Frank wondered if this was the first time anyone had ever told him 'no.' He reflected on the sweet curve of Gerard’s bottom lip and figured it probably was. 

“You don’t have anything to offer me. And even if you did, I’ve learned my lesson the hard way about partnering up with paddy wagons.” Movement reflected in the shining black of the Roadster caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. “Tell your man to stand down or I’ll drop him.”

Gerard cursed under his breath. “Not another step unless I tell you to move or I’ll put a slug in you myself, understand?” 

“Way!” The guy hollered back. The tone was pitched low, angry. Apparently some trouble in the ranks. Interesting.

“Do you understand?” It came out more as a demand than a question, hard with each syllable punctuated as if through gritted teeth. They must have decided it was more effort than it was worth, because Frank heard the sound of retreating footsteps and then Gerard had his attention focused fully back on him. “You back off, we’ll give you fifteen percent right off the top.” Frank snorted. “And we’ll do deliveries for your other New York drop offs. I know your men are stretched thin.”

“Right. I give it to them and half the hooch will be gone before it even gets to New York,” he said. “No deal. We do our own drop offs. I already told you, you don’t have anything I need.”

“Twenty percent.”

“No.”

“Your reputation fucking precedes you, you know that?” Gerard huffed. “Stubborn little shit.” 

Frank shrugged, nonplussed. “You could have just asked around and saved yourself a trip.”

Gerard sucked on the inside of his lip. “I was curious to see if all of the rumors were true.”

“And?” Frank made a vague ‘go on’ motion with his hands. “Am I living up to your expectations?” he asked, only a little curious. Mostly, just keeping the crazy fucker occupied while he thought about how to get the drop on the guy without ending up like Swiss cheese. 

“And then some,” Gerard said. His head was cocked to the side, eyes speculative and intent like Frank was a particularly interesting specimen he was observing behind glass. It made him want to squirm. Or shoot Gerard in the face. Something. Anything other than crouching behind a Roadster in this weird standoff, flapping his gums and accomplishing nothing while Gerard fucking _watched_ him like that. 

“Well, if you’re done satisfying your curiosity, I should warn you that you probably have about five more minutes before my men show up and blow you all down.” Gerard swore under his breath. Frank could admit that he kind of liked the way that sounded coming from his slightly lopsided mouth. 

“You’re a real pill, Frankie, you know that?” Gerard mumbled, eyebrows pinched. But it looked like he was talking to himself more than anything. “I’m trying to be civilized here, and you just—” He made a frustrated sound in his throat, glaring at Frank who was snickering at the word ‘civilized’ being used to describe their current situation. 

“Can’t get any more civilized than warning you before popping you.” He was still kind of laughing to himself, genuinely amused by this guy who had apparently crawled out from under a rock somewhere before he had developed any real bartering skills or self preservation instincts. Or common sense. Frank was a little put out that he had chosen to align himself with the East Side Gang. It would maybe be nice to have some entertainment around that wasn’t Ray’s level headedness or Dewees’. . . Dewees-ness.

Without warning, Gerard fired a shot over Frank’s shoulder, eliciting a pained cry that Frank could hear over the ringing in his ear. “I said, not another fucking step!” A smirk twitched at the corner of Frank’s mouth. Gerard rolled his eyes. "It’s his arm he’ll live.” Four and a half, then. “Take the deal,” he said, “It’s a good one. You would take it if I were anyone else.”

“You aren’t,” Frank said simply. 

“Look, it’s either my way or their way.” Gerard made a gesture off to the side. “They want to put one right between your pretty eyes. No deals, no nothing—just take everything. Looks like you’ve accumulated a few enemies over the years." They would have trouble doing that whether Frank was running shit or not, too many big players who were actually fully capable of putting coherent sentences together and lieutenants who knew how to fucking stay put when they were told to. Gun him down and there would just be another ready to take his place. Frank opted not to say any of this aloud, though. 

“Okay, so do it.” 

“What?” Gerard’s already too wide eyes, bulged kind of hilariously from his head. “The fuck do you mean ‘do it?’” 

“Do it. Put one ‘right between my pretty eyes.’” Frank edged forward. “Why do you care? It’s what your men want, and you don’t know me. We are not friends. Or family. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know your name until about five minutes ago.” A familiar engine sounded in the distance. Frank hoped his gut was right about this. “I’m not going to take the deal. Don’t give me an ultimatum and chicken shit out of it. Shoot me.” 

Gerard didn’t look scared, though. He looked _pissed_. “I will, Frank.” 

“Okay.” When Gerard didn’t move Frank scratched the barrel of one gun against his chin, humming to himself as if deep in thought. “Counter offer,” he said. Gerard’s dark eyebrows furrowed, but his head tilted in, interested. When Frank slid in close, he took his time, going slowly so as to not startle Gerard into pulling his trigger. 

“Way!”

If Gerard heard his guy yelling for him, it didn’t show on his face, eyes not so much as blinking from their trained focus on Frank’s. Their faces were barely inches apart, and he could see the shadows cast by Gerard’s too long eyelashes. Frank tugged his top lip in between his teeth a little, holding Gerard’s eyes and leaned in. Their cheeks grazed, the chill of metal beneath his chin a sharp contrast to the hot surface of the car. He resisted a shiver and murmured, “Run, motherfucker,” into Gerard’s ear.

“Way! They’re here, we have to fucking go! Now!” The barrel under Frank’s chin slid leisurely along his jaw, ice cold in the summer sun. 

Gerard’s breath ghosted out over the side of his face. “See you soon, Frankie.” When he darted out from around the car and hauled ass out of there, Frank didn’t try to stop him and it was maybe not even entirely because one of the Irish boys had a gun trained on him until Gerard tucked himself safely away into one of the Buicks.

Ray was fucking livid. Frank was fucking starving. They compromised. Frank wanted another sign made pronto, so he had a bagel and coffee at The Pink Flamingo—slid Mario a few extra bills when he paid for his food—while Ray yelled at him about ‘goddamn reckless behavior’ and ‘running around like you’re immune to bullets’ and ‘didn’t I tell you, Frank? Jesus Christ.’ He nodded along agreeably, throwing in the occasional apology when Ray took a second to breathe, offering him a cigarette when he lit one up for himself. 

Batting Frank’s hand away, Ray chided, “This is serious, Frank. I’ve heard about this guy, okay? He and his father ran around with Jack Diamond down in Philly, he’s just as crazy as you and he does not have me hovering over his shoulder to make sure that he isn’t doing stupid shit all the time.”

“Lucky him,” Frank mumbled halfheartedly, earning himself a slap upside the head for his efforts. Ray launched into another lecture which Frank guessed he deserved since he was only in this situation because he had ignored Ray’s first lecture. Whatever. He sipped his coffee and nodded dutifully at his ‘best offense is a good defense’ and ‘gotta know your enemy, Frank’ blah, blah, blah. The best offense was pretty much always a solid collection of firearms in Frank’s opinion, though he thought better of saying so. 

“He’s really making a name for himself in New York, Frank.”

“Huh,” Frank said astutely, no follow up, and took a big bite of his bagel.

“Of all the people for you to decide to piss off, you pick the one that could actually be a real threat to you.” Frank rolled his eyes hugely. Ray muttered under his breath, rightly assuming that the words would be wasted on the lunatic sitting across from him. He sighed. “Okay. What did he want, then? You aren’t dead so I assume it was something.”

Frank sucked in a lung full of nicotine. “To make a deal.” Smoke spiraled out thick from his nostrils making him look like a dragon with the sharp grin stretched across his face. 

Wearily, Ray asked, “You said no?”

“They shot up my flamingo.”

“Frank,” Ray whined, narrowly resisting the urge to smash his face repeatedly against the table.

“I just replaced it.”

“You killed three of his men! I think that means you’re square.” _Five_ , Frank corrected mentally.

“Ray.” The amused expression had mostly dropped from his face, replaced by something more solemn. 

“Yeah, I know.” He did know. He understood. He remembered a scrawny little kid, filthy and half-starved, wandering the streets, sticking his hands in unsuspecting pockets—armed with only a pig sticker and an attitude twice his size. It had taken a while to get it out of him—the walls built up around that boy rivaled the United States Treasury—but he remembered the story, the way an eight year old boy had been orphaned and left out in the street to die. “What are you going to do?” Ray asked at last, already dreading the answer. 

Frank’s smile was all teeth. “I’m going to take Greenpoint, then New York.”

Ray smacked his forehead into the table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize in advance for any historical inaccuracies, or grammatical errors. I try to catch them all, but I don't have a beta and it appears editing your own stuff is HARD. Also, in my story Ray has a sister instead of brothers.

It was physically painful, but Ray made Frank lay low for a couple weeks after the shooting. For the most part, law enforcement in the area tended to turn a blind eye to gang on gang violence, Chief Schechter usually made sure of it. The incident had been a little too public though, and a few eager green cops might have taken it as an invite to look into Frank’s private dealings. They were secure on the financial front, but he didn’t want the added attention when he was trying to branch into Way’s Gang’s territory—that was how he thought of them now, Way’s Gang. 

Despite his outward nonchalance, Frank took the down time to actually do some research on Gerard Way. It was as Ray had said, no surprise there, the guy had done some work in Philly with Diamond. He had a younger brother that hung around like a second shadow, and his daddy was a Scott that threw his lot in an Irish mobster when they fell on hard times —a little weird, but not unheard of. And he was absolutely _insane._

He didn’t have a huge body count from what Frank could dig up, strangely pacifist in that way, but the jobs he pulled seemed to defy the laws of nature. There were bank heists, prison breaks, a number of drive bys, weapons raids, a fire involving an entire police station, and his tailor swore there was an incident in the Bronx where he took out a dozen guys by himself with nothing but an umbrella. Frank had his doubts about the last one, but still. There was no consistency, nothing like a clear pattern to label Way with. But he was a fucking artist, of that much Frank was sure, and though he seemed to have the means to do some decent cover ups, Gerard just left it all out on display. It was reckless, complete defiance, plastering himself all over for everyone to see. Like he wanted them to see. Frank figured that the only reason he hadn’t heard of him up until that point was that most of the work he did had been in Philly, and Frank had been really focused on putting his liquor in every dive in Jersey over the last year. He was looking now though. Frank thought about the brazen way Gerard had stood on the sidewalk—out in the open with his face uncovered even though he was a thoroughly wanted man—calling for Frank’s attention. _Well, you’ve got it now._

On day nineteen, Frank had to get out of the house. He had dealt with just about as much bookkeeping and funeral services as he could physically handle without spontaneously combusting, so he decided to tag along with Dewees for a drop off. Ray was off gallivanting somewhere—kissing babies and walking old ladies across the street probably— so he couldn’t really throw in his two cents and make Frank feel like an ass about it. Besides that, they were just going to Louis’ which they’d done a thousand times by that point without incident anyway. A basically bulletproof plan.

Dewees shot him a dirty look when Frank opened the driver door and shoved him over. “If I’m going to die, it’s not going to be riding in the car with you,” Frank said.

“Could just stay then,” James muttered, rolling his eyes. Frank shoved him again, grinning, and slammed the door closed after himself. “Seriously, though. You need to get a hobby, boss. Or a girl.”

“Can’t. Kid-sitting you is a full time job,” he teased. Dewees was nearly ten years his senior, just a year or so older than Ray, and probably the best marksmen Frank had ever met. More than that, he was loyal and tedious as all hell, never left a stone unturned or a corner unchecked. Hands down, if he were to pick someone to be stuck in a scrape with, it would be James. That being said, the guy drove like a fucking bat out of hell, drank too much always, and couldn’t keep it in his pants for shit which presented its own new and exciting issues on a regular basis. Like the time Alice Brewer had slapped ten years off of _Frank’s_ life and left a fat red hand print on his face for a week, because she’d found out Dewees was sleeping with her cousin. He’d seriously considered hiring her as his personal security with an arm like that, but he was half terrified that she’d maybe kill him in his sleep because Dewees slept with her sister or something and he was guilty by association. 

“Yeah, yeah. Keep it up, and I’ll just tell Ray about this little outing.”

“I will drive this car off the bridge and kill us both,” Frank said, only mostly joking. 

“No way, you love this car more than both of us.”

Frank shrugged. “True.”

“So, I heard Way handed you your ass on his finest china,” James offered after a beat. He was going for casual, but the sly look in his eyes gave him away. 

“Jesus Christ,” Frank moaned, “He did not. And who even says shit like that?”

Dewees lifted a shoulder, “Not what I heard.”

“He fucking—they ambushed me, twelve to one.” Twelve, ten, whatever. “And I got out of there without a scratch!”

“I heard it was five to one and that you hid behind your car until Ray came and scared them away.”

“After I shot half of them, maybe! Where did you—What—? Who have you been _talking_ to?” Frank sputtered. “If you hadn’t run off to spread your progeny around Missouri you’d know what happened.”

Dewees’ shit eating grin stretched from ear to ear. “I leave you alone for a couple weeks and you make yourself target practice for the Way brothers. Maybe I should be running this outfit.”

“ _A_ Way brother. One. And it was Frank five, Way zero, by the way.” Well, Frank five, Way half. “And you know what—fuck you. You wouldn’t last a day. Horizontal tango with Alice Brewer’s sister and get murdered in your sleep.”

James’ face screwed up in the true picture of perplexment. “Who?”

“Alice Br—the one that put the snake in your mailbox.” 

His mouth fell open in an ‘o’ as he nodded. “Right,” he hummed, “Right, Alice. Wild cat, that one.” He smiled to himself, a little dreamily, at what was probably, definitely, a truly disturbing memory. “She doesn’t have a sister,” he said, something like disappointment coloring his tone. At least that particular nightmare could be laid to rest. Then, thoughtfully,“Dandy of a brother though. Maybe after a little hair of the dog.” 

Frank groaned. “Please do not fuck her brother. I can’t handle anymore violence from that harpy.”

Dewees grinned wolfishly, “Nothing some restraints wouldn’t fix.”

“Ugh. Stop.”

“Wild. Cat.”

“Put a sock in it already.”

“Prude.” 

Frank slapped a hand over his mouth only to rip it away a millisecond later with a look of disgust. “I should have left you in Missouri,” he said, wiping the spit from his palm onto Dewees’ shirt. 

The car rolled to a stop in front of a small shack. The place was still standing but only just. The door hung in the frame at an angle, the shutters were falling off, bricks littered the ground, old and crumbling. If Frank had it to do over, he probably wouldn’t have ever bothered with _Louis’_ to begin with. He only bought a case a week—not anything good, nothing imported— just the cheap swill Frank got from McCraken down state. He was always picking fights and causing trouble on top of that, flying into drunken rages and making a scene, and then wondering why his joint was doing so poorly. Honestly, by the time he paid off Schechter or the bail to get Louis out of jail, it was all way more trouble than it was worth. Frank didn’t back out of his agreements though, not without legitimate reason to, and _Louis_ ’ had been one of the first places he’d partnered up with once he had made up his mind to take up bootlegging. He owed him. Frank kicked Dewees in the shin and told him to grab the crate out of the back of the car. 

It was early still, maybe noon, the sun still high and bright in the sky, so the place was deserted. Frank pushed the door open, grimacing a little when red paint came off on his hand. “Louis,” he called. No one answered so he called out again, making his way towards the back of the shack to the closet Louis used as an office. A thumping sound, followed by a bump, and the clattering of something metallic drew Frank’s attention. His hand rested lightly on his gun as he pushed open the door. “Louis, you in here?”

“Shit.” It was muffled but unmistakable. Louis’ wild gray hair came into view, just barely sticking up over his desk. “Uh h—hey, Frank.”

“Why are you on the floor?” Frank’s hand still rested on the gun, something very off was setting his hairs on end. 

“Oh, I just—I dropped something.” He cleared his throat and pushed himself to his feet. His curls bobbed as he swiped a hand through them. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Frank and Dewees shared an incredulous look. “It’s Wednesday.” 

“Oh.”

Frank peered at him closer through slitted eyes. “You drunk?”

Louis looked around the room as if he expected spies to pop out from behind curtains and wastebaskets. “No?”

“Well, save some for your customers, Louis,” Frank said, relaxing marginally. He’d never seen Louis stretch a case for an entire week before, always running out a couple days shy of the next delivery and trying to weasel Frank into a couple free bottles next time around. First time for everything, though, Frank guessed. 

James leaned in to deposit the crate on his desk, but stopped when the old man jolted forward clumsily, knocking over a cup of pencils as he waved his hands around. “Now, I—I don’t reckon I need one this week,” he said, face pinched and beet red. Frank lifted an eyebrow in disbelief. 

“You planning on going down the straight and narrow now or what?” If it was even possible, his face went even more red, flirting with magenta.

“Well, no.”

Frank sighed. “I can front you a case this week, but this is the last time.” The man’s mouth opened and closed rapidly like a fish out of water. He was in fine form today.

“What I mean is—Well, I won’t be needing your uh—services anymore.”

Exasperated, Frank threw his hands up and gestured at Dewees who thankfully took over the line of questioning before Frank had a goddamned aneurysm. Another successful bullet proof Iero plan. 

“What the fuck are you on about?” James demanded. 

“Well he said—”

“He _who_? Spit it out already. I’m tired of hearing you gargle your words.”

“Way something—I don’t know. He said he’d give me my same shipment free of charge. Alls I had to do was send you—was to stop buying from you is all.”

“ _What?_ ” It was the highest register he’d ever heard Dewees’ voice hit, he thought appreciatively. “You dirty—”

“James.” Frank’s voice was stern, calm. “Leave it,” he said, then turning to Louis, “Fine. But if I take my liquor then everything else goes too—the bailouts, the bribes, everything. From here on out we’re done.”

“Frank—”

“Let’s go.” James nodded. At some point in the commotion, the crate had dropped to the floor and James knelt to pick it back up before following. Frank turned, lifted a bottle out of the crate and tossed to Louis who was wearing a down right constipated look on his face. “For the memories,” he said. The door slammed shut behind them with a final, resounding thud. 

The drive back was quiet, Dewees’ brooding was heavy in the air like a thick fog that made the whole space seem claustrophobic. Frank wasn’t upset about losing the dive. It really had been a money pit, more trouble than it was worth, but it was the principle of the thing. All a person had in this world was their honor, it was the one thing that no one could take. Without it, what were they? Just a bunch of Louis’ waiting to drink themselves into oblivion. 

“He’s fucking with you,” Dewees said, breaking the silence.

Frank lit a smoke and passed it over. “Of course he is. But he’s going to have to do better than _Louis_.” Dewees grunted but didn’t say anything else. Frank lit another cig for himself. 

Ray would find out eventually, that’s what Frank was telling himself, so it was probably better just to fess up now and take his lashings, so that they could at least figure out their next move. Like ripping off a bandaid. Frank spent another five minutes psyching himself up. He’d literally blown up a car he was in once to prove a point, this was just one human man. No contest. It was fine. He took a deep breath through his nose and marched into the upstairs bedroom Ray had claimed as his own. Then immediately tried to back right out again before Ray looked up from his guitar and actually saw him. 

“Hey Frank,” Ray smiled up at him from his bed, hunched over his guitar with stray curls falling into his face. Frank groaned inwardly, he hated putting him in a bad mood. Especially when he was like this, soft and unguarded, like he usually was after spending the day with his mother. 

“Hey, uh—that sounds new.” He gestured at the guitar, at the tune Ray was fiddling with.

Ray nodded, “It is. My sister got engaged, I’m working on something for the wedding.”

Frank briefly forgot his original purpose of being there and sat down next to him on the bed. “What? Congratulations! We’ll have to send them something.” He mentally cycled through some of the new cars he had acquired over the last month. “What about the Phantom? Or the Touring maybe? Do they like cars? Or—we could spring for a house maybe. But they would have to pick it out of course. Or—” Ray laughed and patted Frank on the knee. 

“It’ll be a year, yet. More than likely. We have time.”

“Oh. Well, good. She said she wanted to marry me anyway, you know. Maybe within a year she’ll come back to her senses.”

Ray rolled his eyes. “She was ten.”

Frank shrugged. “A promise is a promise.”

“I know you didn’t come up here to talk about my sister. What’s eating you?” Ray leaned his guitar carefully against the wall to give Frank his full attention. He winced. 

Just like a bandaid. He regarded the guitar propped against the wall for a moment, trying to gage the likelihood that Ray would brandish it as a weapon in a moment of passion. “I went with Dewees to _Louis’_.”

Ray sighed hugely, “You just can’t help yourself.” 

“It’s why you love this job?” Frank tried. 

“It really is not. What happened? I’m not going to like it, right?”

“I really doubt it.” By the time it was all said and done, Frank had only been assaulted twice even though he was at optimum guitar pummeling distance. He concluded that it was probably Ray’s love for the instrument rather than himself that saved him from that particular fate, but he was willing to take what he could get. Ray, like Frank, wasn’t too concerned about the loss of _Louis’_ , “Money Pit,” but he had a queer look on his face that Frank couldn’t quite decipher. 

“He said he was getting ‘the same shipment free of charge?’”

Frank pulled a cigarette from his case, noting that he was down to two and would have to roll more. “That’s what he said. God forbid he drink something other than that hog piss McCracken tries to pass off as liquor.”

Ray shook his head slowly. “He wants you to know that he knows your suppliers.”

The butt of his smoke burned bright with his deep inhale. “No,” Frank said, “He wants me to know that he has a mole.”

“A _mole_? Who?”

Frank shrugged, “If I knew the answer to that do you think he’d still be breathing?”

Ray made a little noise of acknowledgement and leaned back against his headboard, legs stretched out. “He would have to be someone we hired recently. I’ll put a list together with Dewees.”

“Good. I want to crucify this fucker.”

A single big toe pressed against his kneecap. “Be careful, Frank.” 

“Always am.” 

Ray scoffed his affront, but didn’t bother commenting. He swept himself off of the bed and offered a hand out to Frank. “Want some lunch?”

As it turned out, Greenpoint had been pretty easy to take over. There weren’t too many clubs to begin with and because of the heavily Polish community, all Frank really had to do was ensure that he could promise the owners a limitless supply of imported Vodka at less than sky high prices. No real challenge there. He’d expected some kind of retaliation afterwards, another shoot out maybe or a finger in the mail. Something. What he got was silence and it made him uneasy. He had plans, though, and with Greenpoint in his pocket he was already plotting his course for the rest of Brooklyn. 

The Bedford Nest was working on quite the reputation in the circles he ran with. The owners were in a position to be choosy, had the connections to get his name around, and the money to afford some real quality product. It was the exact kind of showy he needed to send a message. Frank wanted it. Ray told him to take a date, make it a casual thing the first time around and scope the place out, maybe blow off a little steam. The sound of good music, good company, and good business was too promising to pass up, just the type of night Frank needed to deal with the stress of finding their mole. He clapped Ray on the shoulder and had his secretary make an appointment with his tailor. 

Until they narrowed down the list, Frank’s circle shrunk down to basically the three of them—Ray, Dewees, and himself. He had muscle to call upon when necessary, of course—he wasn’t suicidal—but nothing they planned in advance was ever discussed with anyone else. It sucked. He didn’t like knowing that there was one of his own that he couldn’t trust, and it really slowed down his hostile takeover plans, because he couldn’t send anyone else out in his stead. Luckily, Frank liked New York, it wasn’t Jersey, wasn’t home, but it was _alive_. The music scene was so big there, Jazz filtering out of dance clubs and speakeasies, men singing on the sidewalks for spare change. It wasn’t exactly a chore for Frank to have to make multiple trips a week. Being able to enjoy it with other people tonight was enticing all the same, though.

Dewees followed Frank in a separate car. It had been a matter of practicality and stealth on his part when he’d suggested it, but Frank suspected that James had jumped at the idea so quickly just so he could stick his hand up his date’s skirt on the way over. Typical. Judging by the looks he’d shot over his shoulder as he’d piled into the car, he expected Frank to do the same. He laughed silently to himself at the notion. Jamia would cut his hands off if he tried something like that in a moving vehicle. 

She gave him a quizzical look, all scrunched eyebrows. “Why are you grinning to yourself like a loon?” she asked. 

“Just thrilled by your company,” he said. She rolled her eyes and swept a tendril of short hair behind her ear. The new cut was nice on her, bringing out her dark eyes. They’d been sweet on each other once. Frank thought that he probably always would be, but she had told him on no uncertain terms that she had no intention of marrying a man that would leave her with children to raise all on her own because he was either rotting in jail or the grave. He couldn’t fault her. There was a moment even, where Frank considered giving it up, trading this life for a simple one with her, maybe a few children on his knee. This was in his blood, though, and he knew he’d never be able to let it go, not really. “You look beautiful,” he told her. Because she did, dressed in a short black thing and a long string of pearls. 

She smiled at him. “Thank you. But you can’t sweet talk me into your bed.”

Frank squeezed her hand and gave her a sly look. “We’ll see. I have all night.”

The club was nice, lowly lit and crowded, with elegantly dressed couples and an impressive band playing on the short stage in the back. Frank offered his elbow and lead Jamia to the bar. He slipped the man behind the counter a few bills with a significant nod of his head. After a moment of careful consideration, the guy looked around and then beckoned them to follow him to a concealed corner where a false wall opened up to a descending staircase. 

The music was better here, more vibrant and sticky, almost sexual. Frank took his time maneuvering through the crowd of bodies, casing the place out. He planned to be true to his word tonight, just getting a good look around, tossing figures around in his head for later. The bartender nodded to him as he strolled up to the bar. Jamia ordered for them like she always did, Frank content to sink into the familiarity of her company for the night. Their drinks arrived in teacups with pink roses painted onto the side. They were decent. Frank could provide better. He told the bartender as much, passing over a business card for the owner and a tip for himself. 

Jamia waited until the second he had placed his empty glass back on the counter top before she tugged him off his stool and out onto the floor. “I was promised dancing,” she chided. Frank only did a passable Charleston, but she didn’t make fun, just let him lead her around with their bodies pressed together and their feet tapping to the music. She was warm where they were touching, soft and floral smelling. It made him nostalgic for a time long past. She was a fantastic dancer, it was easy to get caught up in the slide of her skin and pulse of the music. Soon it was just them there in his mind, just Jamia and him, and the whine of a saxophone voicing all the things he had never been able to say. He pulled her close. She went easy, sinking into his chest with her face pillowed in his chest. He was drowning in it.  So much so that he almost missed it. Almost. A familiar shape slipping through one of the exits that lead out to the street.

Frank immediately pursued, ignoring the surprised gasp of his name behind him. Gerard paused halfway out of the door and turned his head to wink at Frank before he let the door close heavily behind him. By the time Frank ripped it open and stepped out into the cool night air, he was gone. Jamia’s hand crept onto his shoulder, squeezing. “Frank?” He looked around again, feeling the weight of his gun tucked safely in his waistband.

“Was that him?” Dewees’ voice echoed behind him. 

“Dark hair, black fedora with a red band,” Frank called back. He didn’t have to turn to know that James had taken off in the opposite direction to scour alleyways and nearby buildings. Jamia sighed and shook her head at him in that fond way that said she thought he was a moron, but loved him anyway. 

Frank knew that they wouldn’t find him, Way was long gone. He pushed a clip of bills into her hand and told her to go enjoy herself while he looked around anyway. She shrugged and led Dewees’ date, who looked as bewildered and wide eyed as a newborn babe, back inside with her. Frank preferred his partners more hardy. Still, she was cute. Unlikely to kill Dewees in his sleep, so that was good at least. 

He searched every nook and cranny, every dumpster, every vehicle, he even climbed the ladder to the fire escape and checked the roof. Gerard had vanished. Dewees met back up with him half an hour later looking guilty like  _ he  _ was the one that let the fucker get away. “He’s gone, boss.”

“I know.” 

“I can drive around, keep looking.”

Frank shook his head. “No. Go back inside, enjoy your girl’s company. I’m just going to have a smoke and then I’ll be back in.” Frank couldn’t figure it out. Had it been a coincidence, or had Gerard known that he would be there? He hadn’t told anyone other than James and Ray and he would bet his life on their trustworthiness. There was just no way. But here he was, anyway, smoking in an alley trying to figure out how on God’s green earth Gerard Way had gotten the drop on him. Again. What the fuck? 

Of course, not five minutes later the door opened again the sweet smell of Jasmine filtered into his nose. “I’m sorry, I’ll be back inside in a bit.” Jamia wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him firmly on the mouth. She tasted like peaches and whiskey. “What was that for?”

“I missed you,” she said, and he knew that she didn’t mean tonight. 

“You really do look beautiful.” He swiped his thumb over her collarbone, his hand sliding up her neck to cup the back of her head. “Let’s go back inside.”

She pursed her lips. “Or,” she said, “We could stay here.” Then she backed them up into the wall and kissed him again. He felt off balance for a split second, but got with the program pretty quickly after she slipped her tongue in his mouth. He pulled her close, letting himself enjoy the soft warmth of her body against him, good as it ever was. “I never could do this,” she murmured into his mouth.

“Hmm?” He was trying to recapture her lips, but she moved away, pressing kisses into his jaw. 

“I’ve started seeing someone.” It was spoken into his skin some time later. His head fell back against the brick as she sucked at the spot beneath the hinge of his jaw.

“Anyone I know?” 

She bit down a little. “Maybe.” He hissed in a breath when she palmed the swell in his trousers, feeling her smile against him in response. 

“Serious?” he asked, a little breathless. Fuck it had been too long. Her slim fingers maneuvered the zip down and slid inside. She sucked hard at the spot she was working on, probably going to be bruised in the morning, and curled her hand around the hard length of him. He cursed. 

“We’ve only been to dinner twice,” she said. He was trying to pay attention, but her hand was moving on him with so much familiarity, knowing exactly how he liked to be touched. “But I think I like him.” She twisted on an upstroke and his eyes squeezed shut as he moaned low in his throat. She hummed appreciatively, did it again, stroking him fast and determined now. 

“Fuck.” She was a woman on a mission after that, and he felt his orgasm creeping on him embarrassingly fast, but there was no reason to drag it out. Jamia was saying goodbye, and it _had_ been too long, always too wrapped up in his work to play cat and mouse. She sucked his earlobe into her mouth, twisting her fingers and rubbing her thumb smoothly over the head of his dick. 

“Come for me, Frankie.” Her breath was hot and cooing in his ear. He was weak. He shot all over her hand with a groan, squeezing her hip hard enough that it had to have hurt.

“Christ,” he panted, collapsed all against the wall. He kissed her cheek and pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket to clean them up. “You always did know how to make an exit.”

“I learned from the best.” But Frank had just come his brains out in five minutes flat and wasn’t okay with the sad tilt of her not-quite smile. 

“Marry me.” Her snorting laugh told him that it was effective.

“Not for all the queen’s jewels.”

Frank tucked the now-filthy cloth into his pocket and offered her his elbow. “He’s a lucky man.”

“I know.”

The next morning, coffee in hand, Frank ventured out to his porch for the paper. What he found instead was a plan white envelope. ‘ **Frankie’** was scrawled over the front of it in messy black letters, but that was it, no address or anything indicating a sender. He looked around, peering out around the porch to either side. Nothing. The neighborhood was quiet. He bent down and lifted the envelope gingerly, feeling the weight of it in his hand, but it was thin and light. It was not, or so it appeared, harboring any body parts or explosives, so he tore it open and found only a single thick, white, piece of paper. It was folded twice to fit inside. His fingers itched. 

A few thousand possibilities flew through his mind as he plucked it from the envelope and unfolded it, but not a single one prepared him to find his own face reflected back at him in charcoal. It was a little rough, but definitely him. His head was tilted back against a few shaded bricks, his eyes shut tight with his mouth hanging slack. Underneath, written in the same hasty black lettering was, ‘ **She looks good on you, Frankie XO- GW** ’. The mug smashed into a thousand pieces at his feet before Frank even realized that it had fallen. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past warnings still apply

He couldn’t stop thinking about it days later. He’d marched right back inside, glass shards forgotten on the porch, and set both the drawing and the envelope on fire and threw them into the fireplace. They were nothing but ashes now, but he couldn’t stop seeing it when he closed his eyes. His face tilted back, mouth open in a moan. It was more intimate somehow than the moment captured, having it put to paper. 

His gut clenched with _something_ , Frank couldn’t name what, knowing that Gerard had been there the whole time. He didn’t know how or why, they’d torn that alley and the surrounding area apart, but he had been. And he’d spent that time watching Frank. Watching him fool around in the dark under a street light. Watching him come apart. Studying him would be a better word. Studying him well enough, apparently, to put charcoal to paper and draw what Frank’s face looked like when he came, purely from memory. ‘She looks good on you, Frankie,’ he heard it echoing around in his head in Gerard’s lilting Jersey accent. His face sketched out on paper, just _his_ face, no suggestion that he even knew what Jamia looked like. ‘She looks good on you, Frankie.’ Frank stripped off his jacket, irritable and too warm.

He hadn’t told Ray, or anyone for that matter. Not able to say the words aloud. He knew that he should. The fact that Gerard made a home visit, either in person or by proxy, was significant and affected Ray just as much as it did Frank. Every time he tried to work up to it though, he felt nauseous and itchy, like his skin was too tight. So, he’d been hiding out at the funeral home ever since, under the guise of “taking care of the home front.” Ray had been suspicious but ultimately pleased, because Frank had neglected to mention the creepy, voyeuristic, hand delivered portrait and therefore had no legitimate reason to doubt him. It was probably good for him anyway, he decided, to take some time and figure out his next move—get all of his ducks in a row. The responsible thing to do, for once. 

“Good morning, Mr. Iero.” Kristin hung in his open doorway, looking as polished and coifed as ever with her blond hair pulled back stylishly from her pretty face. “Could I bring you a coffee?”

Frank smiled at her, “That would be wonderful. When you get back to your desk, would you phone Mr. Toro and ask him to come by? I would like to speak with him.” 

“Of course.” She turned to leave but Frank called out again.

“Oh, Ms. Blandford.”

“Yes sir?” She had her little notepad out, ready to jot down whatever it was Frank had need of.

“You look lovely today,” he said. He wondered if she had gotten all dressed up with plans to meet up with her beau that she talked to him about sometimes. He hoped so. She deserved a nice night out, she was a good secretary. 

Her cheeks went pink enough to match her dress as she ducked her head to hide her smile. “Thank you, sir.” Then she skittered out of the room and back down the hall. Frank sighed down at the folders on his desk. He had two funerals to arrange for the week. Normally he pawned this sort of thing off, but the point of being here was to find things to keep his mind off of— Well. He was here for a reason, he might as well do some actual work. It was fine, just dull, as dead people tended to be. Extremely dull. But it was also a solid business that had his name attached to it and evidence of revenue coming in. It was not an inconvenient way to dispose of a body when the occasion called for it either. When it had come up on the market dirt cheap, Frank hadn’t hesitated to snatch it up, warts and all. When law men came calling, asking Frank what he did for a living that was lucrative enough to afford his way of life, he always just smiled and said that he was an undertaker. It was effective. 

Ray showed up around noon, holding out a brown paper bag in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Frank took the food first, fishing the sandwich out and taking a big bite before reaching out for the papers. He whistled and weighed it up and down in his palm. 

“Jesus Christ, Toro, you could brain a guy with this.” He flipped through the stack curiously, then frowned. “This is a lot of people.”

Ray nodded. “We’ve been growing pretty rapidly, Frank.”

“This is too many. We have to cut the fat somehow.” There had to be at least thirty names here, a few pages of records for every person they had brought on in the last year. 

“James and I categorized them from most to least likely to be involved based on position and background. The red circles at the top are for the people we agreed needed to be looked at first.” Frank sifted through them more carefully, plucking the red circled ones out of the pile to place side by side, six names. It was a better place to start at least. “How do you want to go about this? We can’t just beat the tar out of all of them and hope for the best.”

“No, we can’t,” Frank sighed. “There’s six of them here. We’ll each take two and tail them for a few days. If any of them are up to something, we’ll deal with it. You take. . .” He picked up the first two and looked them over. “Auletta and Bryar.” Ray took them while Frank looked over the next two. “Dewees can take Pryor and Alexander. I will take McGuire and Blanf—”Frank choked. “What the fuck, Ray? Kristin?” The words came out hissed, so he wouldn’t be overheard. “She gets a red dot? My fucking secretary, seriously?”

“The time line fits,” he answered solemnly. “She has only been working for you for about six and a half months, and she has access to a lot of privileged information.”

“But she—I mean, she makes my coffee. If she wanted to get rid of me, it would have been easy enough.”

Ray held up his hands, palms out-turned. “We felt that it was worth a look, at least. Who else could have told them where you would be that day?”

Frank considered that for a moment. It fit and he wasn’t thrown off by the possibility that their rat was a woman so much. Just. Kristen had always seemed so sweet. Reliable. Never a missed message or a sick day. He liked her. “Fine,” Frank relented. “Tell Dewees that I want him on this yesterday. I am sick and tired of this prick being a step ahead of us every time.” He sighed and flopped back in his chair, watching Ray leave. Fucking Gerard Way had waltzed into the picture and suddenly nothing was going like it should have been. A thought tickled at the back of his mind, something about the timing. All six of the people on their watch list had been with him for longer than he’d known Way, so which had come first? The plant or their initial meeting? He didn’t know which would be worse. 

If Kristen was a rat, it was all she was. Definitely not affiliated with the gang in any other way, because she drove like a civilian—careful, mindful of her speed, stopping for pedestrians, and making no effort to be secretive about her destination whatsoever. It was cute. Frank slouched in his seat just across the street, watching as her blond hair bobbed while she maneuvered through the small crowd. She sat down at a table by the window where a slim, mousy haired man was already waiting. They shared a short kiss, smiling at each other like school children in love. Boyfriend then. After an hour of nothing even remotely interesting happening, Frank followed Kristen back to her home, parking down the street a ways off where he was out of sight but could still see the house, and waited. And then after another 4 hours of nothing remotely interesting happening, when all the lights in the house had been extinguished, Frank sighed to himself and drove back to his house. It had been a fantastic waste of a day. He had gotten a good look at her boy as they were leaving, though. He could follow that up, at least, see if he was anyone worth knowing about. It was something, he guessed. 

The following days were spent much the same way. Frank worked at the funeral home for a few hours and used the rest of the day to tail after McGuire or Kristen. He had to be more careful with John who had been trained to expect threats while he made drop offs, but ultimately it was uneventful. Dewees and Ray were having the same quality of luck too. It made Frank feel a little better at the same time as it was exhausting beyond all measure. His boys were solid and that was great, but there was something here and he was going to find it. He just needed it to happen sooner rather than later. 

Sooner turned out to be nearly a week later. Frank found himself cordially invited—willingly or not—up to the station on Saturday morning. He had been expecting it. Two nights before some gowed-up punks looking for a fight had evidently not known who he was, just saw a slight, young, fella and thought he’d be an easy target. A couple of them got popped for their efforts while the others ran off into the night. Frank didn’t make a habit of knocking off the local goons so long as they minded their business, but he didn’t put up with blatant disrespect from anyone so that was that.

Schechter rolled his eyes when he saw Frank walk in the door and gestured at his open office. “Go on in and have a seat, Iero. I’ll just be a moment.” Frank settled into a chair and made himself comfortable. In his experience, Schechter had a very different definition of ‘a moment’ than most normal human beings. He found himself looking over the cluttered walls, maps and pictures posted up everywhere. A familiar face caught his eye. It was a mugshot, sepia colored and bad quality but there Gerard was smirking into the camera. Under the picture were the words ‘ **Gerard Arthur Way Wanted $10,000 Reward** ’ with a list of his crimes in small print. Frank wondered how long he had been behind bars before he was busted out. He doubted that it was for very long. Beside Gerard’s poster was another, a hand drawn face—slim and clean shaven, with short cropped hair and spectacles— that read ’ **Micheal James Way Wanted $3,000 Reward.’** At first he couldn’t place the face, just knew that it was familiar. But then he imagined the hair a little longer, a thick line of hair over his top lip, and it clicked. The man Kristen had met with, her beau. That had been Gerard’s brother. Fuck. All of his hope for wanting to keep a good secretary shattered with one failed swoop.

With impeccable timing, Chief Schechter waltzed into the room, slapped a folder onto his desk and glared at Frank. “Did you shoot those boys, Iero?”

“No, sir.” 

Schechter didn’t believe him, it was clear in the set on his face, but he just said, “Get the hell out of here,” waving his hand in the direction of the door. He threw himself heavily in his desk chair. “And keep your goddamned nose clean. For christsake.” 

Ray didn’t say ‘I told you so’ in so many words, but it was in every smug look. Dewees was shit for moral support and pretty much just offered to make the entire gang disappear, only partly in jest. Neither approach was overwhelmingly helpful. They didn’t want to blow the lid off the whole thing right away though. Right now, it was one sided.They knew Kristen was funneling juicy tidbits back to the Ways, but she didn’t know that they knew. It was a good opportunity to slip Kristen a meeting place by ‘accident’ so they could tail him back to their base. Ray asked Frank what he hoped to find there once they did, but all Frank could think about was leveling the playing field a little. Before this, Gerard had been a step ahead at every turn, he knew where he lived, where he drank, where he liked to have his bagel, and he’d turned his secretary into a god damned spy. Frank just wanted _something_ , he’d figure out what to do with it later. 

They decided the sooner the better, and made plans to follow Way back from the Golden Anchor that night, should he show up—he would, Frank was sure. Dewees was hesitant for Ray to go alone so he suggested that he take Bryar with him, they’d found their rat already and Bryar had been an exemplary addition to their brotherhood up until that point. Ray didn’t argue, but he did go a little pink which Frank fully intended to talk to him about at another time when they weren’t discussing potentially hazardous plans with Dewees of all people. All in all, it was a solid set up, they just had to make sure that Kristen did her part. Frank didn’t know what qualified as being ‘Gerard worthy.’ She made his appointments with his tailor and Gerard had never shown up there, but he had no way of knowing if that was because she hadn’t told him or if he hadn’t wanted to be present for Frank’s inseam bring measured. He supposed that there was really only one way to find out though.

“Kristen,” he called. 

She appeared in his doorway moments later like clockwork. “Yes, sir?”

“Would you please call down to the Golden Anchor and set up my reservation for seven o’clock tonight?

She smiled. “Yes sir. Anything else?”

“That will be all, thank you.” He watched her walk away with more than a little bitterness. Fucking Gerard Way. _And now we wait._

  
  


Frank looked up from his book at the scrape of a chair dragging across the floor, biting at the inside of his cheek to keep his smirk in check. Well, if there had been any lingering doubt on the identity of their rat, it was gone now. He painted a confused look on his face. “What are you doing here?” Gerard, who had his head tilted at a ninety degree angle trying to read the cover of his book, lifted an eyebrow at him. 

“Treasure Island?” Instead of answering, Frank just stared pointedly. “You don’t seem that surprised to see me,” Gerard noted. His tone was light, genuinely curious.

Frank snorted and placed his book on the table. “I am growing pretty accustomed to you showing up in places where I don’t expect you to be.” Gerard hummed to himself thoughtfully, running his finger along the worn cover of the book. 

“I read this many times as a child. I thought it might be nice to be an Inn-Keeper.”

“ _That’s_ what you got from it? That it would be nice to be an Inn-Keeper.”

Gerard shrugged. “I grew up to be Jim though. I don’t know how that happened.” 

This was one rabbit hole that Frank did not think he was mentally prepared to disappear into. “What can I do for you, Gerard?”

His smile was wicked for a moment, knee jerk and honest, until he reined it into something more friendly. “I just came to chat.”

“About?”

Gerard studied his face for a moment, like he was trying to make up his mind. “The Bedford Nest, pretty ambitious.”

Frank settled back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Ah. You want me to let you have it.” Gerard’s laugh was high and sudden like he hadn’t expected it to burst out of him like that.

“No, Frankie. I don’t want the Nest.”

“Then why were you there?”

Gerard tapped his finger to his nose like he had the first time they’d met ducking around Frank’s car with his guns pointed at him. I know a few of the boys running that part of town, I just think you should be careful.” 

“Aww,” Frank crooned. “Worried about me, Gee? I seem to remember you taking a few shots at me of your own not too long ago.”

Gerard rolled his eyes. “If I had wanted you dead, Frankie, you would be.”

“Big talk, bub.” But Frank knew there was at least a little truth in it. 

Gerard looked down at the table then back up at him. “How’s your friend?” he asked, tone deceptively casual, “Not too much excitement for her I hope.”

Frank had been trying very hard not to think about that since Gerard had sat down, a big, fat DO NOT ENTER sign posted up over that part of his brain. Maybe the shock of having that door kicked in so swiftly was what caused his brain to malfunction when he responded. “I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to her.”

Gerard tisked. “You scoundrel.”

Frank shook his head, looking around suddenly for the waiter. Where was that man with his food? “No, we used to—” Fuck, why couldn’t he make his mouth stop moving? “But we don’t anymore. She’s just a friend.”

“Hell of a friend.”

“She was. . . saying goodbye. I guess.”

Gerard’s eyebrows had all but disappeared into his hairline. “If everyone said their goodbyes like that, the world would be infinitely more interesting.”

His laugh caught him off guard, this choked, squeaking thing that he seriously wished no one else had been present for. “No, yeah, that’s Jay. Infinitely interesting.” His face must have been doing something he wasn’t aware of, because Gerard was really focused on it, like he was trying to deduce its secrets. 

“You’re in love with her.”

Startled but not denying the accusation, Frank threw a hand up in the air to beckon the waiter over, and merely shrugged at Gerard. “We could never get it right. She’s seeing someone else now.”

“I am so very sorry for your wait, sir,” the waiter said. “It will just be five more minutes and to express our deepest apologies, your meal will be on the house.”

“That will not be necessary, Marquis.” Frank patted the man’s shoulder and gestured across from him. “A menu for Mr. W—”

“Wilson,” Gerard cut in, smiling easily. 

Frank nodded. “A menu for Mr. Wilson, please.”

“Right away, sir.” 

“Are we sharing meals now?” Gerard asked. 

“I’m not going to eat alone while you stare at me, so I suppose we are.” Frank glanced out the window while Gerard was busy perusing his menu. He hadn’t seen Ray’s car slip into the lot yet, which either meant that he was running late or that he was much better at being stealthy than Frank had given him credit for. He looked away quickly when Gerard handed the menu back, rattling off an order to the waiter who bowed a little before leaving the table.

“Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“Have you reconsidered your choice of henchman?” Frank countered. He plucked the cigarette that Gerard had lit for himself right from his fingers and took a drag while Gerard watched him with unwavering eyes. He was always doing that, watching. Frank didn’t think about the look in his eyes when he inhaled the nicotine again, or how it probably resembled the way Gerard had been watching him in the alley that night. 

“Is that your only hang up? My gang.” 

“A big one.”

“What else?”

Frank took a last pull from his—Gerard’s—cigarette before rubbing it out in the ashtray and spreading a cloth napkin over his lap. “I want to know what’s in it for you,” he said, stabbing his fork into a green bean.

“What do you mean? I told you what I wanted.” Gerard played a good game, but Frank had relied on his ability to read people’s faces to survive for a good portion of his life. 

“I’m not stupid, Gerard. You aren’t going through all this trouble for a few of my crumbs. Besides, I know about your other jobs and none of them speak of any interest in the mighty dollar. I don’t partner with people I can’t trust, so again. What is in it for you?”

Gerard tapped his fingers on the table a few times, watching Frank—fucking _watching_ again—all intense unblinking hazel. “You think you know something about me, Frankie?”

“I know enough.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what _you_ think is in it for me.” He didn’t even glance down when his plate was placed in front of him. Frank felt suddenly like he was the one under interrogation here. He resisted the urge to squirm, he was a grown ass man and would not be intimidated by a greasy-haired, albeit pretty, man with fewer skeletons in his closet.

“I think that the gang you’re running with now is a means to an end,” Frank said after a beat. “I think you thrive on chaos. I think you crave attention so much that you will do just about anything to get it. And I may not know what you actually want, but I do know that you are not being completely transparent about your motives.”

Gerard considered him for a moment, the way a cat might consider a mouse. “That was a lot of words for never having actually answered the question,” he said. 

Frank shrugged. “Well, I did ask it first.”

“You must have a theory,” he pressed. “You really can’t think of anything I might want?” His voice was rough, pitched low and almost urgent. When Gerard’s hand drifted across the table to brush against Frank’s own, he jerked it away to fiddle with his fork.

“Congratulations,” Frank offered sarcastically, “You are an enigma.” He expected a laugh maybe or a snide comment, but Gerard didn’t so much as smile—sneering or otherwise. Instead he pushed his chair back from the table and made to stand up. 

“I didn’t take you for a coward, Frank,” He may have let him leave then, too thrown to do much more than gape at Gerard for a few long seconds. Only, out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw a familiar head of hair moving just past the window—not obvious to anyone else but Gerard would notice. Fuck, if he saw Ray now all of this would have been for nothing.

“Wait.” Frank reached out and wrapped a hand firmly around one of Gerard’s wrists and pulled at him to sit back down. Gerard’s eyes stuck on Frank’s fingers circling his wrist until Frank let go. “You didn’t answer me before.” When the only response he received was a crossing of Gerard’s arms, he clarified. “About why you were at the Bedford Nest.”

Gerard sighed, put upon. “You know why.”

“I don’t.” Because he one hundred percent did not, no matter how many disbelieving looks Gerard shot his way which was a great many.

Gerard shook his head in irritation. “The fuck you don't. I was there the same reason that I’m here right now.” But Frank decided that Gerard didn’t get to be the one that was annoyed, Frank wasn’t the one fucking talking in circles and making no sense. He informed Gerard of as much which only earned him a glare.

“I don’t know how many people you’ve managed to convince to work with you, but I am positive that you didn’t talk out the logistics using fucking telepathy. So if that’s what you went there to do, why did you run out as soon as I saw you?” Gerard mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like ‘moron’ under his breath. 

“Frank,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a child. “I am here, because _you_ are here. I was at the Nest, because _you_ were at the nest.

Frank blinked. “To talk. About a truce.”

“ _No._ ” Then, sighing heavily again like a man carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, Gerard said, “I was waiting until your friends went back inside so we could speak in private. But then your girl came out.”

His mouth opened by its own accord and spat words out before he could stop them. Later, he would look back and think that if he could have traveled back in time and bite his own tongue off to shut himself up, he would have. “So, you just watched me.” Like he was watching now, the tiniest smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. Gerard leaned back in his chair. Frank looked out the window quickly, trying to play it off as shyness. Coast was clear. 

“Yeah.”

Frank licked his lips. “Why?”

Gerard tilted his head like a dog, searching Frank’s face. “Next best thing.”

“You drew me.”

“I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“Oh.” Frank’s chest felt tight and he couldn’t seem to get enough air. Fuck, why was it so hot in here all of a sudden. He loosened his tie a little, startling when he looked back up and Gerard was leaning so far across the table. 

“Meet me somewhere.” His voice was so low, barely a whisper but Frank could hear it cutting through the music as clear as a bell. He couldn’t say anything at first. His stomach had tied itself up in knots, and not in disgust. Gerard’s eyes were ebony black in the low light, hot on his skin, and Frank _wanted_. He wanted— 

Warm fingers brushed against the skin under his cuff link. “I—Excuse me.” Frank pushed back from the table, threw too many bills on the table, and got the fuck out of there. He heard his soft curse, but Gerard didn’t stop him.

It was four in the morning before Ray’s mane peaked around the door of Frank’s home office. He hadn’t been able to sleep. At first the buzz of his meeting with Gerard had him too wired, but after around midnight that had morphed into worry. He’d spent the last four hours imagining every possible wrong turn the night could have taken and had been about thirty seconds from scouring the streets when the door creaked open. 

“I was about to send out a search party,” Frank said, aiming for teasing but it came out too solemn and weird to quite pull it off.

“I’m sorry.” Ray seated himself across from Frank. “But he didn’t go straight back. We followed him all the way out to McCraken’s.”

Frank flicked the end of one of the cigarettes that he’d been chain smoking. “McCraken’s? At this hour?” Ray’s head bobbed. “Could you see anything?”

“He was inside for hours, but he only came out with a crate,” he answered, shrugging. He chose his words carefully then, Frank could almost see the gears turning in his head. “They seemed very. . .  _ familiar _ .”

“What does that mean?” Frank demanded, a little loudly. 

“Well.” Ray just shrugged again helplessly and tried to reiterate his meaning with his eyes. “I could be wrong, but Bob thought so too. All I know is that I don’t greet any of my friends that way.” Frank let that sink in for a moment. He had been right then, it was a game. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint what type of game, but it made perfect sense now. Some kind of ego trip Gerard needed, a man in every port maybe. He was suddenly, incredibly, livid. And not at Gerard, but himself for not seeing it sooner. For letting Gerard weasel his way in. Well, that was over now. He had his answer and he could focus again without all the Gerard shaped distraction. 

“Thank you,” Frank said finally. “We’ll talk in the morning. Go get some sleep.”

Ray got up to go. “You too.”

“Yeah,” he answered, but he knew that he wouldn’t catch a wink that night. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read the last chapter right after I posted, I would go back and read the last few paragraphs. I added a little later on when I realized that I'd left a section off. My bad, friends.

A fire had been rekindled in Frank. He went after Brooklyn with a renewed vehemence that had even Dewees doing double takes. He was done playing games, and he decided it was time that he made that particular piece of information public knowledge. Within a couple weeks, Frank was supplying all the prime spots in Williamsburg with very little trouble, a few scuffles but nothing major. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Gerard in that time either. Good. If he never saw him again, it would be too fucking soon. 

Their luck fell through in Bushwick on a sunny late afternoon. It was a pretty standard drop off to a little place nestled between a diner and a hair salon, nothing major, which was how Loggia and his boys got the drop on them. Frank, Bryar, and Auletta were loading back into the Roadster when a gleaming Royce Phantom creeped past them. Someone shouted something unintelligible before a round of shots shattered their windows. Auletta was on the ground, gripping his shoulder, but still trying to pull a gun from his belt. Frank hollered at Bob to put him in the car and get pressure on the wound at the same time as he fired off a dozen shots at the fleeing car. It veered left and smashed into a nearby building wall with a loud screaming crash that seemed to shake the ground around them. A fire started up under the hood which was a signal to get the fuck out of dodge if Frank had ever seen one. This was Brooklyn and Schechter couldn’t cover his ass here. All evidence that they had ever been here had to be gone by the times the coppers came sniffing around. He wanted desperately to run over and make sure that he’d gotten them all, but the little bit of self preservation instinct he’d been born with kicked in when the gas tank exploded and engulfed the entire car in flames. 

They clambered into the car, kind of toppling over each other like puppies fighting over a teat. Which Frank decided was a weird thought to have at that precise moment, as he slammed the door closed and sped off into the setting sun. This would come back to bite them. Of that much he knew. He should have gone and checked to make sure they were all dead, no survivors with a hard-on for revenge, but the likelihood anyone had survived that fire was too slim to chance it. Auletta groaned on a sharp turn. Frank figured he had done what he had to do. “Bryar,” he snapped, “Get that fucking shoulder wrapped up. He’s bleeding all over the seats.” Bob didn’t argue, Frank drove faster. 

He kept an ear pressed to the ground all the next week, but anytime he heard about what happened it was always a mystery as to who was involved. If anyone knew, they sure as hell weren’t talking, at least for now. Frank focused on Cypress Hills until he could be sure the coast was clear anyway.

In hindsight, it had only been a matter of time before he got the call, but it still caught him off guard when the operator asked him if he was willing to accept a call from the station. He took it of course, in case it was one of his. But it was Louis' voice on the line when he answered, barely comprehensible, too loud and gargled, the way he got when he was smoked out of his mind. “—gotta come—gotta get me out here.” Frank sneered into the receiver even though no one was there to see it. 

“I told you. No more bailouts. You aren’t my problem anymore. You can sit there and rot for all I care.” Louis hollered expletives, all his words running together into one screaming, unintelligible moan of fury. 

Chief Schechter took over the call then. “So, you aren’t coming to get him this time?” he asked. 

“No. He dug this grave, he can lay in it.”

“About time.” Then there was nothing. Frank looked at the speaker in his left hand and then hung it back on the receiver. Schechter sure had a way with words. In that he was incapable of using more than three or four of them at a time. 

A few days later, Frank found himself combing out a mane of wild, gray curls, preparing him for burial. Apparently, Louis’ big mouth had finally earned him a knife to the gut. Frank put him in a polished chestnut casket with black silk lining, too fine for the old man to have been able to afford for himself. When he lowered the box into the ground—only Ray, Dewees, Bob, and himself present for the service—Frank thought to himself that _this_ grave Frank had dug for him to lay in. 

“What the fuck do you want?” He was drunk. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it—he was celebrating, fuck anyone who had a problem with it— but that was one hundred percent Gerard Way and not a figment or his imagination, he was sure of it. For one, this Gerard was fully clothed. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to think about that, the state of Gerard’s dress or undress, the state of his body. 

“You’re in a mood.”

“You’re _here_.” It came out sort like a whine. Frank wanted to climb inside of his glass. After a month of masterful negotiations and cut throat price dropping, Frank had finally landed the Bedford Nest. The victory was a rush unlike anything he’d experienced up until that point and he just wasn’t prepared to have it ripped away by fucking Gerard Way just yet. Especially, since he hadn’t shown his face any of the other times Frank had been here. He’d sort of thought Gerard had forgotten about him, honestly. Though, at the time he hadn’t been sure whether he was glad of the prospect or not. 

“Fine,” Gerard snapped, “I’ll just go.”

Frank waved a hand, fucking glowing with relief. “Bye.”

He didn’t go, though. He sat there sulking like a scolded child with his lip pushed out, begging to be sucked on. Fuck. What was _wrong_ with him? He very deliberately looked away. “What is your problem?” Gerard demanded. 

“ _You_.” Frank shot back a tea cup of bourbon. “I’m trying to celebrate and you can’t leave me alone for one goddamned night.” Shaking his head, long hair whipping about his face, Gerard stood up. Frank grabbed him, harder than he meant too, and Gerard winced a little. “Louis is dead. Did you know that?” he asked. “In the big house for drunk and disorderly, liked to flap his gums, Louis. Got himself fucking chived. Did you know?”

Gerard shook his head and tugged his arm, but Frank’s grip held. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You fucking should be. It’s your fault. ‘Cause you couldn’t leave well enough alone. ‘Cause you wanted to prove a point.” _Because you wanted to get to me_ , he didn’t say. And that was the kicker, the icing on the proverbial cake, it was Frank’s fault that the old man was dead too. Frank dropped Gerard’s wrist and pushed away from the bar. “Hope you’re happy with yourself.” He dropped a few bills on the counter and tried to get lost in the crowd of writhing bodies.

“Frank.” The heat of him was close at his back, somehow he could feel it with a hundred people around him, pressed up close. He didn’t answer. The band was good tonight, really into the music, Frank wished he had his guitar. Wished he could be up there with them and forget this day, this whole week, month, year. “Frank.” Maybe in another life he could have this— the music and the attention and the clarity. Now he just had a million unfinished thoughts flying through his mind at the speed of light and Gerard’s hand on his shoulder. “Frank, stop.”

Frank shoved him. “ _You_ stop.” Gerard stumbled a bit, hadn’t been expecting Frank to whirl around on him like that probably. “He was safe with me. I take care of mine, Way. I fucking take care of mine. You only care about yourself, about your mind games and—” Gerard made a grab for him, but Frank ripped away furious. “Just _stop._ I’ve been pretty fucking patient with you. You think I let people get away with the kind of shit I let you get away with? But I’m done, now. I’ve seen how you take care of yours, and I’m not fucking interested. No fucking better than those mugs you run around with.”

“Frankie,” Gerard pleaded again, like it was the only word he knew. Frank was tired of hearing it. 

“Fuck this.” With that, he spun back around and pushed himself further into the crowd until he could get to the side exit and out into the crisp, black night. If he was completely honest with himself—he rarely was, tonight was no exception—he knew it wasn’t just Louis he was upset about. He leaned back against the brick and lit a fag, let the smoke burn out the chill in his lungs. A sense of déjà vu  tickled at the base of his skull. This alley and Gerard and the smoke filling his lungs and all the things he couldn’t want. Christ, he was drunk. He should go home. At the very least, he should leave so he could wallow in his stupidity somewhere less public. 

The resounding thud of the door wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was unwelcome. “This looks familiar,” Gerard said. 

“Go away.”

“He was a drunk old man, Frank. He didn’t care about you at all.” That wasn’t the point. It wasn’t the fucking point, and Gerard knew that, but he was still there in Frank’s space acting like it was and Frank wanted to punch him right in his lopsided mouth. 

“Yeah, and you do?” he scoffed. No answer, just Gerard’s intense gaze on his face. “That’s what I thought.” A moment passed, maybe a minute, maybe an hour. Frank was creeping into that point of drunk where time didn’t pass by so much as it wound around him like a whirlpool while he held on for the ride. 

“Can I bum one?” Gerard had his hand out, palm up, expectantly. Frank shook his head but opened his case and held it out. He needed another drink. Well. No. Not needed, he was too drunk already really, the night kind of swirling around him when he moved too quickly. Wanted one though. Dizziness rocked him when he jerked back, having forgotten that the wall was already behind him and knocking his head against it hard. Gerard’s face was still too close, frowning with the cigarette hanging limply in his mouth. “Just need a light,” he said, bouncing the smoke up and down pointedly with his mouth. Frank watched him as he loomed in until his eyes crossed with their proximity. Gerard pressed the tip against Frank’s cherry and inhaled deep before he finally backed away a reasonable distance. 

Frank sighed, not missing the warmth at all, and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Why are you still here?” He would be mad again later he was sure, but for now the drunk had him tired and resigned. 

“We have unfinished business.”

“We don’t have _any_ business.”

“Frank,” Gerard chided, like he was admonishing a small child. Frank looked away. This was a game, he reminded himself, another one of Gerard’s games. He wasn’t going to play. 

“I told you, I’m not interested. Just go.” Gerard looked around them, considering, then pushed at Frank’s shoulder. Frank batted him away but Gerard kept pushing, knocking Frank off balance until he had slid down the wall a few feet to the left. 

“You were right about here, I think,” Gerard said thoughtfully. It took Frank longer to understand than it should have. At first he just looked around himself more puzzled by the passing second. He was going to ask Gerard what the fuck he was talking about, why he always felt like he needed to be _touching_ Frank and looking at him and not _going the fuck away_ goddamn it. But then all at once, it clicked into place. His breath left him in a big whoosh. “I was going to come over, just to—but then _she_ came over and I—”

“Gerard.” Frank tried to sound stern but it came out like a croak. He needed him to stop, he couldn’t hear this. 

“You looked so good. I couldn’t help it. I just wanted—”

“Shut up,” he hissed. Gerard was so close, leaning into him. “Just shut your mouth, _fuck_.”

He didn't. What he did was put his mouth to Frank’s ear like they were telling secrets. “I wanted to be the one, Frankie. I wanted to put my hands all over you, be the one touching you like that.”

“Shut _up_.” Frank shoved him hard, feeling equal parts satisfaction and guilt when Gerard over-corrected, tripped, and landed flat on his back. He crouched over him with his feet planted on either side of Gerard’s body, and grabbed his tie to jerk him up into an almost upright position. “I am not your fucking toy.” Maybe it was the drunk. Maybe it was the vaguely bewildered expression on Gerard’s face. Maybe it was the rush of finally, finally having gotten one over on him. Maybe it was a combination of the three. He didn’t know. But something shot through Frank and before he could really think about it enough to talk himself out of it, he wrapped Gerard’s tie around his hand a few times and tugged him closer. Their lips met almost painfully, Frank misjudging the distance between them in his stupor, but Gerard groaned low anyway. His lips parted in a sharp inhale and his hand fisted in Frank’s lapel, trying to pull him down. He tasted like cigarettes and coffee and nothing like any woman he had ever kissed. 

Frank let go of Gerard’s tie, finding purchase instead at the base of Gerard’s skull and in his long hair, hanging loose all around his face like temptation incarnate. He couldn't get enough, the slick slide of Gerard's parted lips on his, his soft hair in Frank's fingers, and the burn of his calves as he continued to bend over him. It was good. He could see very clearly now in his mind how it would have happened if it had been Gerard last time that had pushed him up against the brick and kissed the life out of him. When Frank slid his tongue into his mouth, Gerard made a desperate whining sound in his throat, loud and unabashed. Frank wanted to hear it again, wanted to lick and touch and tug until Gerard was a whimpering mess of nonsense noises for the rest of the night, in his bed preferably, but his car was okay too. The thought was too visceral and full of longing, and it startled him all the way back to standing. 

Gerard was a perfect picture beneath him—chest heaving as he panted, cheeks pink, mouth hanging slightly open and so very, very obviously kissed. It sent a jolt of electricity straight to his dick. Fuck, he had to get out of there. Gerard must have seen it on his face, though, because he grabbed his ankle tightly. “Wait.” But Frank wrenched back, shaking Gerard off, and literally sprinted to his car. He didn’t look back. 

There was no specific thought in his head, no moment where he thought ,‘I’ll go see Bert McCraken,’ But the next morning, Ray riding shotgun, Frank found himself doing exactly that, tires eating up asphalt as he tore doing the road. He didn’t know what he’d say when he got there, ‘are you fucking Gerard Way?’ didn’t seem like the most appropriate greeting, even under the best of circumstances. And he hadn’t bought anything since that last case for Louis, because literally no one else drank that shit. So, he'd be lucky if McCraken was in a talkative mood anyway.

Ray hadn’t asked any questions when he’d slid into the passenger seat. He wasn’t asking any now, but he was shooting Frank a multitude of sidelong looks when he thought that Frank wasn’t paying any attention. Like right then. He didn’t call him out on it though. It was in Ray’s nature to worry, just as he had been doing for the more than a decade that they’d known each other. 

McCraken lived downstate in a run down farmhouse that had definitely seen better days. His yard was littered with car parts and the skeletal remains of the ones he’d gutted to rebuild others with. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the means to fix the place up, it was that he just didn’t care to. Something about that—much like the man himself—always rubbed Frank the wrong way.

Having already spotted the familiar vehicle from the road, Bert was waiting on the porch for them when they rolled to a stop. “Iero, Toro,” he greeted, nodding at the pair as they stalked up to the stoop, dead leaves crunching under their feet. 

“Bert,” Ray nodded. Bert's long, unbrushed hair was pulled back from his face in a sloppy ponytail, but the shorter strands had escaped their binds and stood out from his head like the puff of a seeded dandelion and made him look all the more bedraggled. He crossed his arms over his chest

“What can I do for you boys? Been a while.”

“I had some questions about a friend of yours,” Frank answered, having decided on the straight forward approach. “Gerard Way.”

McCraken turned and started back inside, calling over his shoulder, “You could have just used the horn.” But he held the door open for them to follow him in. Sure, Frank could have called, but there was an entire conversation in a person’s face that just didn’t translate over the phone. Ray was looking at him intently, not trying to hide anymore. Frank resolutely did not meet his eyes.

“Can I get you fellas anything?” McCraken asked as they sat gingerly down on the ratty sofa. “Water, beer?” Disgust must have shown plainly on Frank’s face, because McCraken laughed when he reappeared with two glasses of dark liquid. “I didn’t make it.” They accepted, relieved when the first sip proved not to be revolting. “So,” he said, shortly. “What do you want to know?” That, at least, Frank did appreciate about him. Bert had never been one for small talk. 

“What do you know about him?” 

McCraken snorted, snickering to himself. “What don’t I know about that, man?” Frank had to try very hard not to let the wave of red hot, misplaced rage crash over him. 

“How do you know each other?” The question was from Ray, thankfully, and lacked the bite any question of Frank’s would have had. 

“We used to run together back in the day,” Bert answered lightly, Frank wanted to strangle him. “He’s crazy now, but back then,” he whistled lowly, “he was a force.”

“Tell me,” Frank said. Bert did. He seemed to go on for days, going on about all the stupid shit they did together, all the buildings they blew up, cars they stole, banks they robbed, always doped up or drunk or both. Frank got the gist. They got fucked up together and then fucked stuff up together. Until Gerard got caught one day driving his car through a convenience store just to see if he could make it all the way through. Mikey had busted him out after only two days, but apparently he didn’t come around much after that. Bert had looked sad after he told them the last bit, and Frank could hear all the things that he wasn’t saying. 

“Are the two of you still. . . close?” Frank wasn’t sure if Bert would understand, or if he would answer even if he did. But that was stupid, because, honestly, he should have known McCraken would only be too happy to lay it out for him the way he had everything else. 

A slow, sneaking smirk pulled across his face when he met Frank’s eyes, more aware and calculating than Frank had given him credit for. He tongued at his bottom lip. “Sometimes,” he said. “That was a gift from him just last week,” he added, pointing at the glasses Ray and Frank had been nursing. 

“Thank you,” Frank said, stiffly. He pulled himself off of the couch and nodded at Ray who followed suit while giving him these little curious glances. Tossing a few wrinkled bills on the scratched up coffee table next to his unfinished glass, Frank said, “For your trouble.”

Ray waited precisely two seconds after Frank closed his door before asking what the fuck that had been about, to which he merely shrugged. When they were out of the drive and back on the road Ray asked again. Frank waved him off and lit up. “Some fucking friend, huh?” His cigarette bounced as he spoke. “You’re so close but you tell all his business to the first cat that comes calling?” 

“Frank.” Ray put his palm lightly on Frank’s knee and squeezed. “What’s going on?” 

He didn’t answer for a while. He wasn’t afraid of his reaction about the guy thing, Ray and Bob were absolutely fucking, he was one hundred percent sure. But everything else about it was a bit daunting and Frank still wasn’t great about admitting it in the comfort of his own head much less to another human being. Ray squeezed again and Frank sighed. “He—we kissed,” he said, finally. “I kissed him. Yesterday. Last night.”

Ray’s mouth hung open for a solid thirty seconds, wide and unflattering and—under different circumstances—comical. “You did _what_?” Then held his palm up and shook his head fiercely. “No. Nevermind. Shut up. What the fuck were thinking? Have you lost your mind?” Ray shrieked. 

Frank wanted to throw himself out of the moving car. “I don’t know how to explain.”

“Fucking try.” So Frank spilled everything. Every little detail he had buried, everything he’d hid from Ray and Dewees and everyone else, every thought he’d denied to himself. Ray listened, suspiciously quiet, not interrupting him but for once when Frank told him about the drawing—just a disgusted noise in the back of his throat— but otherwise sat tight-lipped and patient while Frank spilled his guts. 

“It won’t ever happen again,” Frank promised. “I’m done. No more games.”

Ray nodded, but he was looking down at his lap, picking a string on his trousers where they had worn a little thin. “Are you sure he’s playing with you?” he asked. Frank’s head whipped to the side sharply, to look at Ray quickly and ask what the fuck he meant by that. Ray lifted a shoulder. “Are you sure? I mean, you know that he’s the only reason that no one has come forward about what happened in Bushwick, right? Threatened the whole neighborhood with a slug for everyone in their house if they so much as breathed a word about it to anyone.” He hadn’t known that actually, but it didn’t change anything. So Gerard didn’t share his toys, not really news. 

“I’m sure.” He said. 

“Okay.” 

Frank let the conversation fizzle out, rolled down the window to clear the air of the awkwardness that had settled between them. After a while, he cast a speculative look at his best friend, the closest thing to a brother he’d ever had. “So,” he said, “Bob, huh?” 

Ray’s bronzed skin went beet red. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took so long friends, I've been really busy. But I tried to make it a little longer for you. Thanks! Also, I wanted to post quickly, so there are probably a thousand mistakes, I apologize in advance and I promise I will be back to fix them later.

Autumn passed by in a blur of changing leaves, cigarette smoke, and liquor. The East Side Gang made some noise portside of New York, but stayed relatively absent in Jersey, all things considered. A few trips to the, apparently vacant, base they had been shacking up in proved as much. Frank was both wary and relieved—mostly. He hired a new secretary in September when Kristen didn’t show up to work one day or any of the days following. It saved him from having to fire her when she outlived her usefulness as an unwitting triple agent, he supposed, but he was a little disappointed all the same. Mrs. Stetson—a kind, matronly woman with quick fingers and exceptional baking skills—was a worthy replacement, but Frank missed her smile. 

Gerard himself was a ghost in the wind, as he was wont to do from time to time. With the exception of a suspicious, shiny new guitar featuring a big, red bow that Frank found propped against the support beam of his porch on the morning of his birthday, that is. He had known when he saw it— gorgeous, polished maple gleaming at him in the soft morning sun—who had gifted it to him, but he had interrogated Ray, Bob, who had become an integral member of his circle by that point,and Dewees anyway, only for them to deny having any part in it. There had been no card, just the ostentatious, red bow and the characteristic stoop drop off that told Frank all he needed to make a likely assumption. He wondered how he’d known, about the birthday, that he played at all, all of it. But it seemed that Way made it his life’s work to know things that he had no business knowing, so Frank didn’t dwell on it for long. The guitar lived unstrummed at the back of his closet, out of sight, but never too far out of mind. 

Halfway through the second week in November, the shoe finally dropped. Then kept on dropping. Two joints in Williamsburg refused their shipment, had a new contract with a ‘Mr. G. Wilson’ and wouldn’t need their supply anymore. Following that, was a dive in Bushwick, a club in Cypress Hills, two clubs in Benford, and a hole in the wall in Greensburg. All saying that they had saddled up with a G. Wilson. All within a span of a week. He didn’t know what Gerard was trying to accomplish with the misnomer, other than to piss him off—maybe that was the entire intention, who the fuck knew what went on in that lunatic’s mind? Surely not Frank—which he was doing a spectacular job of. Frank, livid and maybe a little bit intrigued, went to see his old pal McCraken again to ask if he knew which port Gerard liked to work out of. The shady fucker didn’t even ask why Frank wanted to know, and for the second time he wondered aloud to Ray about Gerard’s God awful taste in men. To which Ray cheekily pointed out that Gerard’s taste in men included Frank. Frank almost swerved off the road and then punched him. 

Originally, all Frank had wanted to do with the information was maybe steal some shit, wreak a little havoc, be a general nuisance to express his displeasure. Nothing too crazy. And then Belleville’s Little Bakery happened. Mrs. Sara never bought much, just a sweet old lady that liked to throw a little vodka or rum into her desserts, and sometimes he’d bring her things for free just so that she would pinch his cheek and say ‘Thank you, Paco, dear,’ and send him home with a cake. When he asked her about it, she had smiled and tapped his cheek and said, “Oh, you have so many customers already, dear. You don’t need little, old me, and Mr. Wilson is trying to get his legs under him, every cent counts.” She sent him on with a kiss and a lemon tart, and Frank had waited until he was back home before he put a dozen rounds into an unsuspecting tree.

So it wasn’t the loss of her business that set him off. This was _his_ town, and Gerard had decided to dip his toe in it. After the whole ordeal with Louis, Frank was not taking that lying down. Fuck Gerard and his scheming and his fucking charming the pants off of innocent old ladies. Frank was done. Done. To prove just how completely _finito_ he was— to himself, his crew, or Gerard, he wasn’t sure—Frank made his mind up then and there that _a little_ havoc just wasn’t going to cut it. Whatever weird truce they had was officially over. The kid gloves were off. If Gerard wanted to play with the adults, then so be it. 

“We could raid the boat,” Ray, determined to be the level headed voice of reason until the day he died, suggested. Frank spent two to three days a week at the Bedford Nest, drinking, gambling, and protecting his investment. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. Sometimes there were girls to pass the time, brief encounters in bathrooms and darkened allies—wherein he didn’t spend a second thinking about choice other trespasses in the alley behind the building— and sometimes there was this. Just him and his boys and a good game of poker, where Frank could strategize without wanting to pull his hair out. 

“Or head them off before they get there. Fuck with them a little,” Bob chipped in. 

Frank slid two cards across the table and gestured for two more. Shaking his head, he answered, “Not big enough.” He tossed some chips in the middle. “Raise you ten. Dewees?”

He sighed and folded. “Too rich for my blood. We could sink the runner. No booze, they lose.” Smirking to himself, James lit another cigar.

“Wow, think of that one all on your own, did you?” Bob deadpanned, tossing a chip into the pile. 

“Fuck you.”

“We could,” Frank said, thoughtfully. 

“I am not fucking him,” Bob stated firmly, like it was something he wanted to make absolutely sure was understood by all parties lest there be confusion. A flinch barely registered on his face when Dewees punched him hard in the arm. 

“Or,” Frank continued, a shit-eating grin plastered across his face. “We blow up their boat.”

“Frank.” 

The warning from Ray was drowned out by Bob and Dewees’ hoots of approval. Frank laid down his cards, four ladies, ten high. “Read ‘em and weep, boys.”

Bob threw his cards down. “Son of a bitch.” 

Like the rest of the country, Gerard got his rum from The Sugar House Gang in Detroit, which Frank immediately crossed out as an option. He had a good thing going, but that didn’t mean he was ready for the heat of the Purples on his ass. The second port was better, opposite Atlantic City just a few miles off of the coast where the US jurisdiction ended. It would be a drawn out process, waiting and observing until they could find a sure pattern before they rolled up all guns a-blazing. “I want a man stationed at every entrance and exit. Different cars, different faces, no one parks in the same place twice. We learn their schedule inside and out, and then we’ll make our move, no sooner.” A chorus of affirmatives sounded off around him and then Bob cleared his throat. 

“I know you had that queen up your sleeve, Iero.”

Frank puffed his cigar and exhaled a thick cloud in Bob’s face. “You want fair, you’re in the wrong business, pal.” He tried not to be too obvious when he slipped an ace into his coat pocket while he shuffled this time, though.

After a few hours of ironing out details and ridding everyone of their money—honestly or otherwise—he decided to call it a night. He wanted to get a early start on scoping out some new spots he’d had his eye on for a while, and the night was already half gone. Dewees opted to stay put in favor of chasing around a few skirts, but Bob and Ray volunteered to bring his car around while he settled the bill. The bartender nodded at him amiably. “Mr. Iero.”

Frank inclined his head in return, and slid some money across the countertop. “Keep the change, Charlie.”

“Thank you, sir.” As he spun to leave, a two ton baby grand of a man slammed right into him, and knocked him back into a bars tool that clattered noisily to the ground. 

“Watch where the fuck you’re going, Ethel,” the mammoth barked. One minute he was hulking in Frank’s space, throwing his weight around like a silver back gorilla, and the next he was hunched over, clutching his bleeding nose in his hands and howling. Frank’s right hand fisted around the handle of his gun tucked into the back of his trousers just as he felt Dewees’ shoulder brush against his. 

“There a problem here?”

Frank watched the guy swear, holler, and dab at his nose which was pretty obviously broken and heavily gushing blood all over his white button up. “No, I think we’re good.” He lifted the bar stool off the ground and sat it back upright, before patting James on the shoulder and weaving around the crowd that had gathered to get to the exit. 

“I’ll fucking kill you!” The threat was hurdled at the back of Frank’s head, choked out, tight with rage and probably embarrassment. 

“Promises, promises,” Frank sang back, waving over his shoulder without turning around. Dewees would handle it, he knew. He could already hear him telling the bouncer to take the trash out. He clenched and unclenched his hand, it hurt like a motherfucker. The guys face had been made of bricks. Worth it though.

Ray and Bob were waiting for him out front with expectant looks on their faces. “Did we miss something?”

Sliding onto the cool leather and closing the door after him, Frank shrugged. “Nah.”

  
  


Crisp December winds chased after the last days of November, herolding in an era of ice and snow that blanketed everything in sight. The cold brought out the worst in people, Frank had concluded long ago. Like the chill permeated past their skin to their souls. He had theorized that it was too many winter nights on the verge of hypothermia as a child that had tainted him to this lifestyle, that had numbed him to the death and violence. A chip of ice in his soul. 

It was shaping up to be an ugly winter already, and that went doubly for the crackpots. As it turned out, the baby grand that Frank had socked that night was a heavy hitter for a steadily growing gang out of Brooklyn run by some white collar, Lewis or Lopez, something, and while they hadn’t directly retaliated yet, there was talk that they were planning something to even up the score. Apparently, some smaller crews had caught word and thought to use it as their leverage to get in good with Lewis—Lopez? Three foiled raids within a one week span and Frank was at his limit. He had to send a message, something big enough to frighten the bunnies back into their holes, at least until he had dealt with Way, because he couldn’t afford to have his attention divided when they were ready to strike. 

He stretched his arms out over his head, cracking his back, and closed the driver side door. It wasn’t ideal, but he was going to have to ask Schechter for a favor. He didn’t need him to actually do anything so much as he needed him not to do something. His job, specifically. Frank had four guys rounded up and ready to ride on a few of the repeat nuisances, he just needed to make sure he could count on the neglect of the Belleville Police Department. Frank greeted the receptionist with a tip of his hat and a flirtatious smile. 

Having been on the receiving end of a thousand of them by that point, the trim, middle aged woman just lifted an eyebrow at him unphased. “Here to speak with the Chief?”

“Yes m’am.”

“He’s free. You can head back, you know where his office is.” 

Because he was a glutton for punishment, Frank winked at her unamused face, receiving zero acknowledgement, as he made his trek back to the second to last door at the end of the hall. He rapped his knuckles against the wood briefly, but didn’t wait for a response before pushing the door open. He regretted that decision immediately. 

The sight forever burned into his retinas was of Jamia leaned back against the desk, Schechter bent over her, their lips trying desperately to suck the skin from each others’ face. “Are you serious?” Frank blurted. 

Schechter jumped a foot in the air, whirling on him in surprise, as Jamia lounged back further on the desk with a smirk. “Knock next time! Don’t you know how doors work? Jesus Christ.”

Shaking his head, Frank gestured helplessly at the man across from him. “This guy, Jay? This is the guy?” 

She shrugged, not even a little bit embarrassed. “This is the guy.”

Schechter seemed to have gotten over his shame, because he straightened up and fixed Frank with his no bullshit stare. “What do you want, Iero?”

“It’s a private matter,” Frank answered, his gaze flicking to Jamia pointedly and then back at him. Jamia stood up fully, crossed the small distance to the police chief, and pulled him down into a kiss. 

“See you tonight?” 

“Couldn’t keep me away,” she murmured into his mouth. Frank tried to wipe the disgust off of his face, but he didn’t think he was successful based upon the smirk Jamia gave him as she passed. “See you, Frankie,” she sang, patting him on the shoulder. 

“Maybe not plastered to the Chief next time though, huh?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He could hear her giggle through the door she closed behind her, and all the way down the hall. Women, a different species altogether, surely. 

Schechter sighed. “Spit it out, Iero.” 

It went better than he thought it would, and soon Frank was pulling back up to his home with a solid course of action, though a couple grand lighter. Bob’s car was already in the driveway which was good because he was supposed to be leading the job, and it saved Frank the time of finding him first. “Ray?” he called. The fireplace was burning warm and cared for, Frank stopped in front of it to warm his hands. “Ray,” he called out again. There wasn’t an answer, though. He must have been upstairs. Frank shed his hat and coat, and spent a few more minutes in front of the fire, thawing out his bones. 

Maria was in the kitchen when he popped his head in, busying herself with dinner. She smiled at him. “Dinner will be ready in an hour, Mr. Iero. Can I get you something while you wait?”

“Coffee would be a godsend,” he said, returning her smile. “Have you seen Ray?”

“Mr. Toro was in his office with Mr. Bryar, but that was maybe half an hour ago.”

He nodded, “Thank you.” Ray’s office was suspiciously empty, so Frank jogged the flight of stairs and tapped a quick greeting against Ray’s door, before pushing it open. And fuck, Schechter was right, he really needed to learn to use a door. What the fuck was his life coming to, seriously. “Fuck, sorry!” Bob was a little pink, but otherwise unaffected by Frank’s interruption, as he sat up on the bed and pulled Ray up with him. Frank tried not to notice how Ray’s hair was more dishelved than usual, or how his lips were all red and puffy. What the hell was in the air today? If he walked in on Dewees next, he was going to gouge his own eyes out. 

“You knock, then wait for an answer, and then open the door. That’s the order.” Ray eyed him with irritation, but beckoned him into the room fully. “How did it go?”

“He’s a greedy bastard, but we’re good to go.”

Bob nodded. “I’ll round up the boys.” 

Shaking his head, Frank waved him off. “After dinner, Maria is preparing a feast in there.” Like clockwork, Bob’s stomach gave a loud groan which made Ray cackle, and Bob shove him. The trio ambled out the room one by one, taking seats downstairs in the living room where Frank doled out cigars as he clipped the tips off of them. 

“We have news too,” Ray said. Frank made a ‘go on’ gesture. “Dewees says that we’re ready.”

Frank’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. “When?”

“Next week.”

“Is he sure?” But Dewees wasn’t the type to mention it if he wasn’t absolutely certain. 

Ray nodded. “Could set a watch by them.”

He had already lost two more Jersey spots this week. “Good.” If Frank’s pulse remained too fast in his veins, he chalked it up to excitement. 

The stars were out, the moon hanging high over head, and it was really too cold to be out sitting on his porch drinking illegal beer and smoking, but that was where Frank found himself some time later. Bob had left shortly after dinner, and made quick work of the whole thing, calling less than two hours later to say that everything was handled. It was after midnight, probably pushing one in the morning maybe later, if Frank was pressed to say. The neighborhood was quiet and peaceful, not a single lamp shining in a window on the block. Frank wasn’t self-reflecting exactly. He tried pretty hard to avoid too much soul searching, but self-quieting would maybe be an apt term. He’d been on edge since dinner, not nerves or excitement, but _something._ He didn’t know, but it wasn’t productive when he was in the middle of working the kinks out of an incredibly risky job, so he tried to find peace out in the arctic shadow of the night.

The problem with a silent, winter night like the one Frank was currently enjoying, was that even the tiniest sound was audible—Frank’s inhale of nicotine, the shuddering of bare trees in the wind, the crunching of dead leaves under a heavy, male foot. Frank’s head snapped up, his hand immediately finding the security of his revolver next to him on the porch. “Come out slowly, hands where I can see them,” he barked. 

“Just me, Frankie,” came the soft response, nasally and lilting and familiar. Gerard did what he was told, though, shuffling out from the shadows with his palms in the air facing Frank. 

“What are you doing here?” He should have just turned in when Ray had. Ray always knew better. One day he was going to learn that. 

“Can I put my hands down, now?” Frank shrugged, his gun was still trained on Gerard, so there was no way that he could pull anything before Frank shot him anyway. “I didn’t think that you would be awake.”

“So you were just casually snooping around in my yard? Not sure that helps your case, old boy.” 

“Wasn’t snooping.”

“Okay, what _were_ you doing then?”

“I just wanted to talk.”

Frank narrowed his eyes at Gerard shuffling in front of him. “You just said that you thought I would be asleep. Which is it?”

Gerard shrugged, “Both.” Frank had a sneaking suspicion that Way had been planning to break into his house. A suspicion that was confirmed when Frank informed him that his housekeeper was a light sleeper that slept on the ground floor, and Gerard muttered, “I wasn’t going to use the front door, Frank.”

“And if you picked the wrong room, and woke up Ray?” Gerard looked away shiftily. He knew which window, then. Fucking creepy bastard. Frank told him as much which only caused Gerard to grin to himself. “If I catch you breaking into my fucking room in the middle of the night, I’ll bump you myself.”

“Sure, Frankie.”

“No. No ‘sure Frankie,’” Frank sneered, suddenly red hot and disproportionately furious. “No ‘Frankie’ at all. We are not friends, Way. We aren’t anything, you imagined this fucking—whatever, you think this is— in your goddamned head, and now I can’t get rid of you.” Gerard’s face fell, his features difficult to make out in the light of his small lantern, but Frank could see that his usual smirk was missing. Good. Frank wanted him just as fucked up as Frank was, just as confused and wanting, just as enraged. “Are you this starved for attention? Or is this just how you get your rocks off?”

“Frank.” Gerard made to come closer, but he got two steps in before Frank cocked his gun and aimed it right at his head. 

“Not another step.” It was totally inappropriate, but all Frank could see in his head was Jamia bent back over the desk, Ray tugging Bob on top of him on his bed, Frank jerking Gerard up by his tie on a dark, quiet night like this one. The whole day just seemed like an omen, like a foreshadowing of what was to come. The air between them felt charged and uncertain, endless possibilities hanging there. Blood and violence, sweat and sex, screaming and laughter, everything and nothing hanging there for Frank to choose. Not again. Not tonight, on this fucking backwards day where nothing made sense. No. 

“Frank—”

“Go home,” Frank interrupted, “Go home, and don’t come back. This is your only warning.” Gerard watched him for a long moment, Frank wished his light was brighter so he could make out the exact expression he was wearing, or maybe that it was out, so that he couldn’t see Gerard’s face at all. And then Gerard nodded to himself and turned back around, disappearing into the darkness the way he had come. Frank took himself to bed, drunk himself into a coma, and passed out into a thankfully dreamless sleep. 

Flames sprung up everywhere, consuming the vessel like a stray dog eating his first bite of food in a week. Something exploded, probably one of the barrels that the gang had just liberated from the runners, drowning out the screams of the crew on board and spreading the fire to cover every inch of the boat. A few of the men aboard dove off the side, but the weight of the boat sucked some of them under as it sank, leaving nothing behind but flaming scraps of barrels and boards floating around on the water in its wake. 

Dewees whooped and hollered profanities, shaking his gun in the air, before frank shoved him in the direction of the car. “We have to get the fuck out of here, someone heard that explosion,” he ordered. James was still grinning when he stuffed himself into the car and cranked it up. In this particular situation, Frank supposed that James’ ability to fly down the road at record speeds was a useful skill. 

“That was fucking beautiful.” Frank nodded, loading their weapons in case there was an ambush waiting for them while Dewees chattered on beside him, high on adrenaline and violence. Ray was following behind them at a pretty impressive speed himself, sticking close to them so they wouldn’t be separated if there was an attack. Light glinted off a familiar Buick in the distance. Frank swore.

“Get fucking ready,” he yelled to the two men in his backseat. “Fucking drive, Dewees!” 

“What the fuck do you call this?” As soon as the car was within range, Frank and his men filled it full of lead. They weren’t the only ones shooting, though. Gerard hung dangerously halfway out of the window, expression fierce and determined, peppering Frank’s roadster with bullets and shattering Frank’s side of the wind shield. 

“Fuck,” Frank hissed, as glass sliced at his skin. “Lose them!” Frank looked Gerard directly in the eyes and put two bullets in the right front tire. The Buick jerked and spun, the back tire deflating as McGuire took his lead and landed a few shots to the rear. They veered off into the brush, soon becoming a blur in the distance as Dewees flew down the road toward home. Frank saw Gerard’s angry face in his head, the determination and the mystifying sense of betrayal, and knew that this had only just begun. Gerard wasn’t going to take it lying down, he thought with satisfaction. Maybe now, he would get it through his thick skull. What they were—or weren’t—that Frank wasn’t free for the taking, that he wasn’t goddamned Bert McCraken, waiting for him to grace him with his presence every so often when it suited him.

“No, _that_ was beautiful,” McGuire quipped. 

“Fuck yeah,” Dewees agreed. Frank slouched in his seat and away from the wind gusting through the hole in his windshield. 

He didn’t have to wait long for Gerard’s retribution. Not even a full day as it turned out. Frank had crashed early that night, dead tired from adrenaline and listening to his crew regale each other with tales of the day. But it felt like he had only closed his eyes for minute when Ray came barreling into his room and shook him awake. 

“Frank! Get the fuck up.”

“What?” Frank snapped, pressing his palms into his eyes.

“It’s on fire,” Ray gasped, pulling at his wrists, trying to tug him out of bed. Frank immediately swung his legs out from under the blankets and tugged on his earlier discarded trousers.

“What’s on fire?”

“The funeral home. Auletta smelled smoke on his way home, said the fire engines were trying to put it out, but it’s—I think it’s gone, Frank.” Frank didn’t say anything at first, trying to process what he was hearing as he pulled his clothes on. “Frank?”

“Go,” he said, “Deal, with the police. They’ll be snooping around. And the safe in my office is fire proof, see if you can salvage it.”

“Where are you going?” Ray asked, like he dreaded hearing the answer.

“Way and I have some things to settle.” Ray looked like he wanted to argue, but something on Frank’s face must have stopped him, because he just sighed instead and nodded. 

“Take Bob or Dewees with you. You need back up if you’re going to go into the lion’s den.” Frank agreed because it was what Ray wanted to hear, but when he loaded himself into his undamaged car, and started towards the hideout they had uncovered while scoping out Way’s gang over the last month, he had absolutely no intention of involving anyone else. Stupid, though it might have been, this was between him and Gerard, it was personal. 

Frank cut out his headlights a mile before he reached the little brick house, parking a ways down, nestled behind a thicket of trees and overgrown brush, and quietly closed the door to his car behind him. All the lights were on, boisterous conversation filtering into the night. Celebrating their victory, Frank thought bitterly as he creeped around the side. He ducked beneath a window which displayed at least four or five men sitting around a well lit room, not great odds, and not who he was looking for regardless. He had almost made it to the unsuspecting back door when the chill of a gun barrel pressed against the hollow at the base of his skull. 

“I should blow your fucking brains out where you stand, you piece of shit.” Frank’s thumb pushed slowly at the hammer of his gun. “Drop it,” the voice barked at him, and Frank swore as the gun cocked sharply in his ear, not messing around. He dropped his gun and then the other one when the guy demanded that one too. “Been expecting you.” His captor lead him in through the back door where the voices died out immediately as the inhabitants turned to look at them. 

“You were fucking right, Murphy!” One of them crowed. The guy holding the gun on him, Murphy apparently, cackled. 

“What should we do with him?” Though Frank already knew where his vote was, judging by how the barrel of his gun was digging into his skull. A chorus of suggestions rang out, full of ‘drown him’ and ‘shoot him’ and a particularly sadistic ‘gouge his eyes out and fucking feed them to him’ which had Frank’s face twisting up in disgust. 

“Fucking crazy bunch of Micks, ain’t ya?” he quipped. The gun cracked sharply against his temple, making him see stars before it pressed against his skin again. 

“Keep your mouth shut, trash.” A door at the back of the hall opened up, revealing a pissed off looking Gerard. 

“Everyone out!” he snapped. The group whirled on him, angry dissent on their lips. He cut them off with a, “Get the fuck out.” A mousy haired man, which Frank immediately recognized as Gerard’s kid brother, emerged from the door then too. He had a gun in his hand he didn’t hesitate to fire into the wall next to one of their heads. 

“He said, ‘out’,” Mikey said evenly, voice not raised even the slightest bit. “We have plenty to discuss in the other room. This doesn’t concern you.” Soon, the room was emptied, Gerard’s crew filtering into the room Mikey and Gerard had come from, albeit noisily and not without complaint. Mikey nodded to Gerard and followed them in. It was just Gerard and Frank and Murphy, who hadn’t let up even a little bit in all the commotion.

Gerard stepped up on them then. “Get your fucking hands off of him.” All the conflicting imagery he had of Gerard, all the stories and the fucked up jobs he had done that Frank could never quite picture, snapped into place. Never had Gerard looked more dangerous than he did at that moment, calm, collected and deadly serious. 

“My cousin was on that boat, Way,” Murphy snapped. “You’re going to let this fucking wop walk after that?

“If you had waited like you were instructed to, no one would have been on the boat.” Gerard cocked the hammer of his gun with a sharp clicking sound that seemed to fill the room. “I won’t repeat myself.” Murphy’s face flushed a deeper angry scarlet, his mouth screwed up in a snarl, but he let go. 

“You’ll regret this,” he threatened. Frank watched him disappear into the back room too. Gerard hadn’t relaxed after the door slammed behind him. He was wearing the same severe, calculating expression, but it was directed at Frank. 

“You idiot,” Gerard hissed.

“You knew we were watching you? For how long?”

“Not as long as you were watching, I’m sure. We only caught on because your boy got comfortable and parked in the same place twice.” Frank swore inwardly, rooky mistake.

“And you didn’t do anything about it.”

Gerard pursed his lips. Frank noticed that Gerard hadn’t uncocked the gun yet, the one still firmly in his grasp. “I had something planned.” But they fucked it up. He didn’t say it, but Frank could hear the unfinished sentence anyway. He wanted to ask what the fuck Gerard was doing. Why he hadn’t just let Murphy and the others have their way, because he was obviously pissed. Maybe he wanted to kill Frank himself? Why he hadn’t gone for the kill shot earlier that day instead of just shooting out his windshield, if that were the case? He wanted to ask why he’d gone for the funeral home, knowing full well that it would be empty in the dead of the night. He knew where Frank lived, he could have ended it right then if he wanted to. And here they were. Talking. Equally livid, but civil. He wanted to ask about that too. All his questions knotted up together and stuck in his throat though, and he didn’t say anything at all. “So, you thought. . . what? That you were just going to skip right on in here and cap me?” Frank shrugged. “You are the single most infuriating human being I have ever met,” Gerard said, glaring, but he uncocked the gun and sat it down heavily on the desk with a thud. The sound loosened something in Frank’s chest.

“Right back at you.” But Gerard spoke over him, voice rising as his calm exterior shed like a snake's skin and revealed a new, twitchy, irritated Gerard. 

“As many stupid, erant thoughts as you act on without thinking first, it’s a wonder you haven’t been put out of your misery yet.”

“Fuck you.” Frank’s teeth flashed white with his sneer. “I won’t take criticism from someone so pathetic that his own crew doesn’t take him seriously.”

“No, fuck you.” Gerard grabbed at him but he dodged his hand with a sidestep. “The problem they have with me, is that I’m always dealing with _you_.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short, Way. I’m sure their issues with you don’t stop at me.” 

Gerard lashed out quick as a cobra strike, shoving Frank hard. “Do you have _any_ idea how much those motherfuckers want you dead? Any idea how hard it was to talk them out blowing your car up or setting your house on fire? And you would have fucking deserved it too, you arrogant fuck.” Frank, not anticipating the blow, didn’t have time to brace himself and stumbled back against the bookshelf. “Fucking waltzing in here like you’re god damned invincible.” Gerard shoved him again, but there was nowhere to go and Frank’s head vibrated off of one of the shelves. “What were you thinking?” Gerard’s face was close and furious, tinged pink at his neck. Frank’s brain had too many thoughts swirling about that he couldn’t pluck one out of the swarm to offer to Gerard, he just stood there staring, stock-still and wordless. “Say something, Jesus Christ.”

Frank meant to tell him how Gerard had brought all of this on himself by creeping into Frank’s town. He meant to say that he wasn’t sorry and that they weren’t square by a long shot, and probably wouldn’t be until both of them were dead and in the ground. He meant to ask Gerard what his plan was now, if he was just going to shove Frank against the bookshelf all night until his arms got tired or if they were finally going to have it out here, once and for all. Instead, what Frank’s witless mouth blurted out was, “Are you fucking Bert McCracken?”

Once the initial mortification subsided a touch, Frank concluded that the satisfaction of watching Gerard gape like a fish was almost worth the humiliation. “What? Bert?” Gerard passed a hand through his hair, making it stand up all over the place. Frank really wanted a cigarette. “Is that what all this was—Frank, you complete fucking imbecile.” He shoved him again, but his hand stayed where it was on his chest afterwards, fisting in Frank’s shirt. “I am not fucking Bert McCracken.” Frank opened his mouth to protest, because that wasn’t what McCracken had implied and what did that dirty fucker have to lie about, anyway? But Gerard slapped his other hand over Frank’s mouth and told him to shut up. “How have you managed to live this long, being this god damned stupid?” Frank made an indignant noise around Gerard’s hand, ready to show him stupid if he didn’t quit fucking call him that. Gerard’s hand slid from his mouth to swipe across his cheekbone, in a characteristically Gerard mood swing, shaking his head slowly as he did. “McCracken.”

“That’s not what he implied,” Frank mumbled, more sulkily than he had meant to.

Gerard rolled his eyes. “He gets caught up in the past. And he probably wanted to fuck with you.” 

“Why would he think that would fuck with me?”

Gerard blinked at him a few times, unimpressed, then said dry as the Sahara Desert in the summertime, “Yeah, what a crazy thought. It’s almost like he thought you might do something insane like stalk me for a month then try to blow me up.”

Frank looked away. “I knew you weren’t on the boat,” he muttered, completely bypassing the rest of Gerard’s implications. 

Gerard shook his head again and repeated, “McCraken,” like he was in total disbelief. Which wasn’t fair at all, and when Frank thought about it he wasn’t sure why he was even taking Gerard’s word for it. 

“They saw you, Ray and Bob. They said you seemed _close_ , intimate like.” 

Making a frustrated noise in his throat, Gerard threw his hands up in the air and then sighed loudly, before he grabbed Frank by his shoulders and shook him. “I’m not fucking McCraken, Frank. Or anyone else for that matter. Maybe you haven’t noticed somehow, like every other person on this god forsaken rock, but I’m completely _consumed_ by you. You fucking jackass.” Frank very suddenly could not catch his breath. “I had all of these plans,” Gerard laughed then, a frustrated, unhappy sound. “I kept hearing about you. About the great Frank Iero taking Jersey by storm and I had to see for myself, but I knew the only way you would take notice was if I was competition. I had connection here so I took— I wanted to —I don’t know, win? You had this big thing going and I wanted to take it. Just to see if I could. But then you were so—I had never imagined you would be so _magnificent_.” Frank needed Gerard to stop fucking talking, like yesterday. Because he couldn’t breathe, and his heart was beating against his ribcage so hard that it ached. Was this what a heart attack felt like? Christ. Gerard pressed his forehead against Frank’s, his eyes squeezed shut so tight, like he was trying to hold on to the image in his mind’s eye. “So fucking gorgeous, Frankie.” His words were a warm gust of air against his face. “So beautiful. And I wanted—I had to—” 

Frank surged upwards, closing the small distance between them with urgency and reckless abandon. His lips were soft and tobacco flavored like before, warm and responsive against his own. Frank’s head spun with it, with the memory of their last and only kiss, with the feel of Gerard against him now. His hands twined in Gerard’s hair like they always itched to do when he was within reach, relishing in the softness, and it was so good, so good, and it had only just started. Gerard’s mouth opened for him immediately when Frank licked at his bottom lip, so intoxicatingly eager for his tongue that Frank moaned into it as he tasted Gerard’s mouth, the tops of his weirdly tiny teeth, the ridges of his soft palate, and the little bumps at the back of his tongue. Gerard pressed bodily against Frank, the long line of him meshing with his so that they touched everywhere from knee to chest and sighed into the kiss. It was a tiny, happy sound gasped into his mouth that made Frank’s stomach flutter, so he gripped Gerard’s hip and pulled him in tight to try and recreate it. Gerard gasped, breaking their kiss to pant into Frank’s neck, sucking on the skin there as he rolled his hips. Fuck. He was hard. 

Frank’s head fell back against the bookshelf. “Christ.” 

A smile curled Gerard’s lips, pressed against Frank’s skin. “I prefer Gerard.”

“Shut up.” He did. Mostly taking it as an invitation to suck bruises onto Frank’s neck, while he tried fruitlessly to pull Gerard’s face back up to his. A wandering hand gripped the curve of Frank’s ass, squeezing, and ground their pelvises together. “We can’t do this here,” he choked. Gerard lined them up and rolled his hips again. Fuck. Frank was going to die. His dick twitched happily against Gerard’s erection. “Gerard, stop,” he panted, desperate. “We can’t.”

Gerard bit him, hard. “We can.” He maneuvered his hand in between their bodies and cupped Frank through his trousers, causing them both to hiss. “You’re so hard, Frankie. Let me. Please, let me.”

Frank moaned, “Fuck.” Then pulled Gerard in for another kiss, hot and languid, all tongue and spit slick lips and too many months of not doing this, of not being pressed together tasting and touching and savoring. Gerard felt good. Solid. More real than anyone Frank had ever been with before and they were only kissing. He wanted with every fiber of his being to lay Gerard out on some obscure surface and fuck him until they both passed out from exhaustion. Gerard’s warm hand slid under the waistband of Frank’s trousers causing him to draw away with a shaky exhale. “I want you,” Frank said. “But do you really want Murphy to walk in while you have your hand on my dick?”

Gerard made a face. “Could you please not bring him up while I’m trying to put my hand on your dick?” He drew back though, albeit belatedly. “Are you going to tuck your tail between your legs and run out of here? Pretend like nothing happened again?”

“Fuck you.” But there was no heat in it. “This is a bad idea.”

“Probably.”

Frank sighed, all the fight leached out of him with the weight of this entire day. “You can’t just let me go. They’ll mutiny.” Gerard nodded, thinking, and then stood up straight, steadying himself. 

“Just don’t fuck up my face, I hear it’s my best feature,” he quipped. Frank smiled, thumbed at the swell of Gerard’s full bottom lip, pulled back his fist and then planted it firmly into Gerard’s cheek. He crumbled, clutching his face, winching but he didn’t cry out. That was going to leave a nice bruise. 

“See you soon,” Frank said before sprinting from the house and out into the night. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short. But also quick?? So that counts for something. Maybe.

What remained more closely resembled a charred skeleton than the funeral home that it once was. He could rebuild, but there was really no point in it when he would have to knock down the remaining beams and start fresh at the foundation. It was really and truly gone. Well, it had a good run at least, Frank decided. And he could offer his staff a new position at whatever new venture he took up. It could have been worse. Actually, Frank knew first hand that it should have been worse, but for Gerard. 

Frank kicked a burnt piece of something— a chair or desk maybe— and made his way back out of the debris. The safe was really the only thing worth salvaging from the place and Ray had gotten that the night before. The lot was in a nice enough neighborhood, though. Maybe a new library would be nice. Not a money maker by any means, but there was a car dealership for sale not too far from his house that he could look into for that. It was worth talking to Ray about at the very least. Mind made up, Frank drove himself home and found that when it was all said and done, he wasn’t even upset about losing the place. It was a startling revelation for him to have, when just a handful of hours ago he was livid enough to march into a pack of armed men without a single shred of back up just to have the opportunity to chew Gerard out for it. 

“What if we turned the lot into a library or a bookshop?” Frank asked as soon as he entered the house. “Something like that.”

Ray looked up briefly from his guitar, the tune was familiar. After a minute he recognized it as the one he had been working on for his sister a few months back. “You realize that those are quiet places, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and?”

Ray shrugged and made a mark on the notepad next to him on the couch. “You couldn’t be your usual, raucous self.”

“Fuck you. What do you think, though? Honestly.”

“Honestly?” Ray smiled. “I like it. Good place for it too. Always thought that plot was wasted on a funeral home.”

Frank nodded. “There’s a car dealer—” The shrill ring of the phone startled them both. “Hold that thought.” Frank lamented the absence of a personal assistant, he hated answering phones. “Hello?”

“Hey.” There was no mistaking the voice on the other end.

“Uh,” Frank peaked his head around the corner. Ray was still fiddling with his guitar, not paying even the slightest bit of attention to him. “Hey. How did you get my number?” It registered a second too late and he found himself saying, “Kristin,” at the same time as Gerard. “So, you do know how to use a phone. I thought maybe you always showed up on someone’s porch unannounced when you wanted to talk.”

Gerard’s snort was muffled like he was hiding his face or ducking his head. Frank wondered if his hair was doing that thing where it came loose and hung long against his cheek; his hand itched. “I didn’t want to scare you off, again,” he admitted, a little shyly. “After yesterday, I mean.”

Frank rolled his eyes even though no one was there to see it. “I am a grown man, Gerard.” He popped his head out again. Still strumming. 

“I know,” Gerard said, “But I didn’t hear from you.”

“It’s,” Frank checked his watch, “eleven fifteen in the morning.” Gerard didn’t say anything to that. Frank sighed. “Look, I’m not running. I know that I—” Frank watched Ray scribble more notes onto his pad. “Did before. But I’m done with that and frankly, it didn’t do a whole lot of good anyway. Obviously, I hadn’t counted on you being a creep that tried to sneak into people’s bedroom windows while they slept.”

Gerard hummed into the receiver. “If I knew that got your rocks off, Frankie, I would have just led with that. Maybe put an ad out in the paper.”

“Shut up.”

“My, my, someone is lively this morning.”

“Well.” Ray found a chord he liked, nodding to himself with a satisfied smile. “I just came back from the wreckage of my former business. Something like that could make a person a little grumpy.”

“Hmm,” Gerard hummed noncommittally.

“It was _burned to the ground_. Maybe you heard something about that?”

“You burned my boat,” Gerard chirped, almost gleefully, which should have been off putting. “And everyone on it. I’d say that we’re square.” 

“Oh, you would, would you?” 

“Well,” Gerard said, full of mischief. “Maybe not. I have a few ideas on how to reconcile that, though.”

Frank’s cheeks flushed hot for a long, embarrassing moment. He cleared his throat and watched Ray close his notepad. “You and your gang are going to back off the hell off now, right?” Frank asked. Gerard’s high pitched giggle made Frank’s face bunch up and he glared fruitlessly at the wall until Gerard had composed himself enough to respond.

“Oh no, Frankie. I’m having way too much fun getting you all worked up.” Ray lifted himself off of the couch with a stretch. 

“I hate you,” Frank said, and didn’t wait for an answer before he hung up the ear piece, and walked as nonchalantly back into the room as he could, trying not to look too suspicious when he sat himself back down. 

“Who was that?” Ray asked curiously, not accusingly, he told himself.

“Oh, Schechter. Asking about the home.”

“Again?”

Frank shrugged as if to say ‘cops, am I right?’ “Let me finish telling you about the dealership. I think it could be good for us.” 

“I am all ears.”

All things considered, Frank should have expected it. He knew Lewis—he was sure about the name this time—had been planning something, but the smaller crews had died out after Bob paid that extra special visit to a few of them, and he’d thought that he would have at least another week before he would have to put them on his radar. But that was his first mistake, thinking that anything was the way that it used to be before Gerard had come along and flipped the word upside down. Everything since that fateful day he had shown up and blew Frank’s flamingo to smithereens seemed to take some wild turn, always finding an alternate route to the way he had planned. 

His second mistake was not beating the fucker to the punch in the first place. He had let this thing with Gerard take up so much of his attention and resources, hadn’t wanted any distractions, that he’d gotten off course. Somehow he had allowed himself to forget about the bigger picture while he was acting on his every impulse, and maybe Gerard had made a decent point about that. Maybe Frank should work on his self control, because it was really back to bite him in the ass now. 

They were in Brooklyn making drop offs, splitting up to make quick work of it. Frank, Dewees and a few others had taken Benford, Bushwick, and Ridgewood which were more likely to give them trouble than the other neighborhoods. It was midday, sometime after two o’clock, when they rolled into Bushwick, having already had a smooth run in Benford. Really, the way his luck had turned over the last six months, Frank should have expected it. He was punching the bag with Pryor while they unloaded when he heard the first shots, close-by but not originating from the street he was on. Without hesitation he ordered his back up back into the car, shouting at them to get fucking ready as he tore through the street. Dewees was working in the next neighborhood over, there was no way it was just a coincidence. The sound of gunfire filled the air seriously now, clearly a back and forth of bullets, one round answering the other. They came to a screeching halt behind his Roadster, the one Dewees had road out in that morning, his men already hanging out of the window firing off shots at the car across the street. Both vehicles had seen better days—windows shot out, flat tires, holes denting the exteriors—acting as a barricade for the gangs behind them. Frank crawled across the leather seats and slid out of the passenger side door, staying low as he sought out the rest of his crew. 

“Dewees is shot!” Auletta hollered once he caught sight of him, ducking down to reload. “Back seat!” Frank’s stomach dropped out. Laid out on the backseat, legs hanging out of the open door, was Dewees. Blood drenched his white shirt, staining the entire front red so that Frank couldn’t make out where it was coming from. He ripped the buttons open to get to Dewees’ torso. 

“Not really my type,” Dewees choked out, labored and wheezing, blood staining his lips as he coughed. “No offense.” Frank ignored him, but joking had to be a good sign, so he tried to let it comfort him a little. But blood was pouring from Dewees’ chest when he got the cloth out of the way and joking just didn’t have anything on that. Frank was an undertaker not a doctor and he didn’t know what the fuck to do here, except to get him the fuck out before he bleed to death on the side of the road. 

“I have to get him to a hospital,” Frank shouted over the gunfire. Pryor nodded, and helped Frank lift Dewees out of the backseat. It was tough getting him into the other car without jolting him too much, James pretty much dead weight at that point, and the two of them crouched down so that they didn’t get a bullet in the head for their efforts, but they managed it. Frank turned Dewees on his injured side, erupting a spray of profanities from the invalid. He didn’t know if the bullet had punctured anything important or not, but the last thing Frank needed was for Dewees to choke on his own blood if they had managed to hit a lung. 

“I’ll cover you!” Pryor positioned himself behind Frank’s car and landed an exceptionally impressive shot on a guy with a rifle pointed at them. 

“Destroy them,” Frank said, “And don’t get fucking killed.” Then he slid back in through the passenger door and sped the fuck out of there like the hounds of hell were on his ass. “Don’t you dare fucking die on me back there, you piece of shit.”

“And miss all of this fun we’re having?” It was weak, but it was something. Frank drove faster. He almost hoped that some of them made it out alive, so that he could tear them apart himself, piece by piece. 

There were questions at the hospital, ones that Frank wasn’t eager to answer as the doctors rushed Dewees back into surgery. Luckily, medical professionals were just as persuaded by money as the rest of the world, and he happily threw bills at them until they left him alone with his thoughts. It had to have been Lewis’ gang. Word on the street was he had been after the Benford Nest for some time, no doubt just looking for an excuse to start something with them, using retaliation as their convenient cover. A coward’s move. The way Frank saw it, in this business if you wanted something you took it, no hiding behind deceit, no shrouding unsavory motivations in something a little easier to swallow. There was no honor in that. Good, it would make wiping them off the face of the earth feel that much better. 

It seemed like he waited there for days, just him and his thoughts and a dozen other people with their own problems that didn’t so much as glance his way, even with blood on his hands and smeared up his shirt. Eventually though, a bloody white coat stopped in front of him. Frank met the look on the doctor’s face with all his worst fears, but the man rested his hand firmly on Frank’s shoulder and told him to take a breath. 

“Your friend is stable,” he started. If his hand hadn’t been there pressing him down, Frank could have floated up to the ceiling with how light he suddenly felt. “It was touch and go at the beginning, he had a punctured lung and he lost a lot of blood, but he must be the most stubborn man alive. He just refused to go.” And yeah, that pretty much summed Dewees right up. Too fucking stubborn to do anything he didn’t want to do, including die. “He got lucky. That bullet missed his heart by maybe an inch. Even so, if you hadn’t brought him in when you did, he would have drowned on the blood in his lungs. ”

Frank swore to himself, seeing all the other ways this conversation could have gone if he had shown up just a few minutes later, or if Lewis had some decent gunman. “When can I take him home?”

“Two weeks, if we’re lucky. And even then he needs to be strictly on bed rest for at least six weeks. I won’t ask what happened, but if this particular brand of excitement is normal for your lot, he needs to be isolated.” The doctor looked Frank right in the eyes, holding his gaze to invoke the seriousness of the situation. As if Frank didn’t fucking see it for himself. “Too much activity will put him right back in here, if it doesn’t kill him first.”

“I understand,” Frank said. “Can I see him?”

The doctor shook his head. “He needs his rest. Go home, get cleaned up and get a good night’s sleep. You look like death warmed over,” he answered, firm but sympathetic. “You can come back in the morning.” Frank might have protested if he didn’t feel like death warmed over too, but as it was he felt raw and tired and still enraged, like an exposed nerve. He wouldn’t be doing Dewees any good by disturbing him from much needed sleep, anyway. Frank nodded and pulled himself out of the chair, popping his back in three places when he stood up straight. 

“Thank you.”

“Get some rest,” he ordered again. But Frank was already checked out. As he drove back to Jersey, there was only one thing on his mind, and it sure as shit wasn’t rest. 

Six slouching figures were waiting on his porch when Frank pulled into the drive. It was dark, but their faces were illuminated in his headlights and he could see fear and fatigue written into their features. “Did you kill the sonava bitches?” he demanded as soon as his feet touched the ground. 

“One of them got away,” Pryor said, full of shame. “They had backup and our car was dead, we couldn’t chase them.” Frank kicked a potted plant, catapulting it across the yard where the pot shattered on impact, swearing. “I’m sorry, Frank.” But he waved him off and made a gesture for them to follow him inside. 

“He’s alive,” he announced once he closed the door. The question had been lingering heavy in the air from the moment he’d gotten out of his car, each person more weary of the answer than the next. Now, the room seemed to shudder with relief. “Barely. He almost didn’t make it.”

“It was the big one,” McGuire started suddenly. “The one that shot him. He’s the one that got away.” Big one. The goof from the club. He probably recognized Dewees, maybe thought Frank was in the car too. Well. Frank hoped the lug enjoyed his last night on earth, because tomorrow he was going to find him and watch him choke on his own blood. 

“Find out where he is. He rides with the Lewis gang, start there. No one sleeps until he’s found.”

“What do you want us to do when we find him?” Bob asked. When, not if. Good. Bob looked like he hoped Frank was going to tell him to put him out of his misery. Frank liked Bob.

“Find a payphone. Call me. I want to take care of him myself.”

Ray waited until they had all dispersed before he crossed the room and pulled Frank into a rough embrace. “I thought for sure when I saw all the blood. . .”

“Yeah.” 

“But he’s alive.” 

Frank gave a final squeeze then pulled away with a weary laugh. “Doc said he was too stubborn to die.”

“That’s about right.” Ray pushed a hand through his already disheveled hair. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, right back at ya,” he said, lighting a much needed smoke.

“Seriously, you should get some sleep. I can listen out for the phone.” 

Frank shook his head, taking a few long drags until he felt more calm. “I said no one sleeps, I included myself in that.”

Ray sighed, but he recognized the tone after over a decade of knowing the kid. “Want a drink?”

“Christ, yes.”

“I know you have to,” he said. Their hands touched briefly as Ray passed him a glass. “But you know that killing that piece of shit is going to start a war, don’t you?”

Frank drew a pattern into the condensation collecting on his glass. “I know.”

Ray nodded. “Make him hurt.”

Half of the glass disappeared in one gulp. “I plan to.”

It was the door that startled the pair of them some hours later, not the phone. They were planning, Ray wasn’t wrong about getting into an outright gang war. The Nest was hot real estate, and Lewis wasn’t the only one around happy to take it off of Frank’s hands. As soon as the others smelled blood in the water, they would be coming in droves to snap up Frank’s empire. They had to be ready, couldn’t go into this without a solid, foolproof schematic. Ray went for his gun just as quickly as Frank did. They looked at each other for a long moment, before Frank nodded silently to him and went for the door. 

He’d been expecting one of his men maybe, or one of Lewis’, the police even, but it wasn’t any of them standing on the other side of the thick mahogany. It was Gerard. Looking worse for wear, dark hair mussed up, face tight and anxious looking, but Gerard all the same. Frank relaxed a little at first on reflex, but remembered Ray watching him on the other side of the room. He hadn’t exactly told Ray what happened the last time they had seen each other. In fact, as far as Ray knew, Frank had wound up at an empty house and had to turn back around. Ray had berated him about not bringing backup like he’d told him too, but over all had been relieved enough to let it go. Having Gerard turning up on his front porch now, probably wouldn’t be as comforting a visit to Ray. 

“This isn’t a great time,” Frank started, but Gerard was already pushing forwards, hands on Frank’s shoulders, back him into the house. 

“You’re alive.” His tone totally threw Frank off his train of thought, breathy and full of relief and maybe a little awe. For a baffling handful of minutes, he forgot Ray was even in the room. Gerard closed the door behind him with his foot and grabbed at Frank’s face, his right hand finding purchase against his cheek. “I thought it had to be you. . .”

“What are you doing here?” 

“That’s an excellent fucking question,” Ray piped up. And just like that he was back in the real world. Gerard’s head snapped in Ray’s direction, aware of his existence for the first time. “What the hell is going on? Frank?”

Frank gaped for an entire minute, not sure how to answer that when he didn’t even know what was going on himself. Gerard rescued him though, offering out his hand for Ray to shake almost sheepishly. “Um Gerard,” he said, then added, “Way.” Ray looked from Gerard’s face to his hand and back again, unimpressed. 

“Yeah, I know who you are. Why are you in my home?” Frank looked back at Gerard then too, because that’s what he wanted to know. That and why Gerard would think he was dead.

“I overheard a couple of meat heads talking about how they ‘bumped a Jersey big shot.’ How they were going to take back Brooklyn. I just assumed.” 

Ray squinted at him. “So you raced right over to—”

“Where?” Frank demanded. Their mouth clicked shut and focused back on him. “Where were you?”

“Little Richard’s,” Gerard said, bewildered. 

Frank crossed the room in half a second flat, snatching his keys up off of the table. “It was Dewees,” he tossed over his shoulder. “They shot Dewees. He’s alive, but that garbage won’t be for long.”

“We have to wait for the others.” Ray reached for his arm, but Frank snatched it away.

“He could be gone by then.”

“Frankie, that place is crawling with goons,” Gerard started, “Most of them with a chip on their shoulders over you. You can’t walk in there without guns backing you up.” Ray looked like he was stuck between wanting to agree with Gerard and wanting to demand why the fuck he was so invested in Frank’s well-being all of a sudden. The overall effect resulted in something vaguely constipated looking. 

“I’ve got guns. And Ray,” he said, ducking around Gerard to get to the door. “Let’s go Toro.”

“And me,” Gerard decided. Frank spun on him. “Don’t fucking look at me like that. You’re going to get yourself killed going in there like that. You need back up.”

“And that’s _you_?” The question was from Ray, voice pitched high with disbelief. 

Gerard’s smile was wide and sharp. “That’s me.”

“Fine,” Frank said, for once he wasn’t going to argue. Gerard was a scary motherfucker when he wanted to be, and Frank was outmatched on this one. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially not one that was handy with a pistol, and an arsonist in a pinch. “Get your ass in the car. I’ll fill you in on the way.” 

Gerard was fantastic. That was all Frank could think about afterwards, when they were driving back. The three of them were all wrapped up in their own heads, not really saying much as road signs flew by them. Frank had seen Gerard in action before of course, but there was something so different about seeing it from the other side. Something captivating in the way they fed off of each other, giving and taking direction as easy as breathing, like they had been doing it their whole lives, like two halves of a whole. The joint had been crawling with rival gang members, Gerard had been right about that. At first no one really paid them any mind, just more faces in an already crowded club. It might have stayed like that too, at least for a little while, most of them knew his name but not his face. It would have been easy enough. Frank had been interested in getting even though, not in things being easy. And once he had spotted Goliath, Frank had made a beeline right for him, put his gun to the guys’ temple before he even had a chance to notice him, and pulled the fucking trigger. 

All hell broke loose after that, bullets flying and tables flipping, the three of them fighting their way out of the brawl once they had done what they went there to do. Goliath’s friend had moved on them, guns all around and tempers to match. Frank hadn’t hesitated to let his weapons do the talking, but Gerard was just so quick. He’d put a slug in both of them before he had a chance to cock his gun, shooting Frank a wink before he spun off into the crowd to help Ray with Frank fast on his heels. They would make a good team, Gerard and Frank’s band of rejects. He considered saying so, but thought better of it at the last second. Another time maybe. For now, tonight’s victory was all Frank wanted to think about, especially when he knew war was right around the corner. 

Ray fixed him with a look and announced that he was going to bed, once they had arrived back to his estate. He had questions, no doubt, but he was going to let them lie until the morning. Frank was grateful. 

“Thank you,” Frank said. Gerard shrugged one shoulder and graced him with his lopsided grin. 

“Couldn’t let you get your head caved in by anyone other than me.”

Frank rolled his eyes, but tried to fix him with a sobering look. “At least three different gangs saw us together tonight. They could come for you too.” Frank nearly shuddered at Gerard’s smile, sharp and dangerous, very nearly a sneer. Whether from discomfort or exhilaration he couldn’t say.

“Let them.” Before Frank could tell him that this was serious, that Gerard’s own gang was liable to hear about their collaborating, Gerard swooped in and sealed his lips over Frank’s. It was quick, just the warm press of his mouth and the slightest touch of his teeth grazing Frank’s bottom lip, but it was enough to make him forget the lecture he had prepared. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, then like an afterthought, “At least try not to piss anyone else off. It's exhausting having to save you from your self destructive tendencies on a regular basis.”

"Fuck—" Frank was cut off by the heavily slam of the door as Gerard turned and stalked out of the house. He waited up until his men returned before taking himself to bed, but when he slept that night it was a rest to rival the dead. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, so, this chapter is short and basically just smut. I'm sorry for abandoning you guys for so long, but I got busy with work and then a tech free vacation this is pretty much my first day back. I wanted to post a longer chapter, but I figured that until I had more I could at least provide you with the sex I have been depriving you of. Much love <3333
> 
> (Also, a warning for unsafe sex)

Morning found Frank and Ray, ICU occupancy limits restricted the others to the waiting room until the two finished, seated in the tiny, sterile room Dewees’ bed resided in. Frank had tried to negotiate a transfer to a closer hospital first thing, so that it would be easier to keep company—and protection—close by, but the doctor had vehemently protested that idea, at least for the next week. He didn’t like it, but better to drive than have Dewees keel over on the way to Jersey. 

Considering that he was sporting a hole in his chest that went clear through his back, Dewees was in pretty good spirits, but the painkillers they had him on had his words slurring and his eyes fluttering shut every so often. It was obvious that the guy needed some rest. Guilt ate away at Frank, acidic in his belly, so he tried to stick to only the important things, cutting the anecdotes short and sweet. He stuck mostly to how all those motherfuckers were stone cold now. How he’d plastered the piece of shit’s brain all over the wall before the fucking oaf even knew he was there. Dewees had made a face at the imagery, half disgusted, half gleeful, and punched Frank weakly in the closest limb he could reach. “ _Sick_ ,” he rasped, but his eyes were bright for a moment, and Frank felt warmed by the knowledge that he’d done right by his brother. 

Frank wanted to wait, but Ray insisted that they talk defense, and Dewees, being the stubborn ass that he was, sided with him. They had worked out some of the details already the night before, but James excelled at finding holes and weak points in any strategy, so his input was vital. It didn’t make Frank more eager to tire him out, no matter what the two of them said. Still, Dewees suggested that they start squirreling money away in case worse came to worst which honestly hadn’t crossed Frank’s mind before that point somehow, and he couldn’t deny that perhaps it was better to get Dewees involved rather than not. It wasn’t ideal, but if they needed to disappear at some point, he wouldn’t have time to liquidate funds, large sums of cash on hand would be a necessity. As it was, Frank had cash, but the vast majority of his wealth he kept tied up in various ventures—less likely that someone could steal it that way— and spread out among a dozen banks around Jersey. They stayed like that for a while, switching to the offensive which was infinitely more fun to talk about, even though Dewees was firmly and decidedly not invited to the festivities due to his injuries. By the time they pulled themselves up out the cheap, uncomfortable chairs, Dewees had dropped off for some much needed sleep, and Frank felt more solid than he had on the drive up. 

As they were leaving, Frank gave strict instructions that Dewees not be left alone. He wanted at least one person at the hospital at all times. He didn’t know if a hit had been put out on Dewees or if anyone else even knew where he was, but Frank wasn’t taking any chances. He would probably be offended if he knew, still in denial about the vulnerability his condition put him in, but it was the very least that they owed him. 

Unfortunately for Frank, everyday responsibilities didn’t stop, just because he willed them to. There were still deliveries to be made, maintenance to do, cops to pay off, and liquor runs to organize all while he was trying to buy the dealership in town and stop in to see Dewees, that didn’t magically happen while Frank plotted the demise of his competition. It was times like this that he was infinitely thankful for Ray, who had more of a head for business than Frank could hope for and was happy to step in and take care of the mundane. Still, it was a constant juggling act, one that left him exhausted down to his bones by the time he crawled into his bed at night. Most of the time he could pass out the moment his head touched the pillow, other nights—like this one—his thoughts were too loud. Too full of ifs and whens, of plans and back up plans, of dreams and nightmares, of family and friends, and—at the furthest, most deliberately unexplored depths—of Gerard. Gerard, who had been coming around increasingly more frequent, throwing his lot in with theirs when it suited him. 

The first time, after that night at Little Richard’s, Gerard had come around offering up his services, Bryar had very nearly put a hole through his chest. Frank had given Ray points for discretion as he’d talked Bob into lowering his weapon. After that, they’d just given the two of them bewildered looks, like they were trying to do advanced calculus in their heads, but ultimately trusted that Frank knew what he was doing. It was endearing, but Frank did not know what he was doing. He knew that Gerard wasn’t going to try to murder him in his sleep, at least. Well, he was ninety-nine percent sure, anyway. And beyond that, he was just as lost as the rest of them. He only knew that there was something between them, something magnetic and volatile. They couldn’t sweep it under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there and they couldn’t stay away. Frank just hoped that it wouldn’t be his undoing.

The moon was full, silvery streaks of light streaming into Frank’s bedroom window and his closed eyelids. He sighed, giving up after an hour of unsuccessfully trying to coax his brain into unconsciousness, and pushed himself out of bed. The moon cast his yard in a near ethereal glow, illuminating patches of snow and the white capped tops of trees. The figure slouched against the brick beneath his window should have surprised him, he supposed, but somehow he had expected him to be there, casting shadows in the light of the moon. Frank pulled on some clothes and a thick coat to protect him from the chill of Jersey December. The house was quiet as he slipped downstairs, just the sound of Ray’s soft snuffling snores and the creek of wood flooring beneath Frank’s feet. He stopped in the kitchen and put a kettle on, taking down two mugs from the cabinet for tea. It was a little bit of a juggling act getting the front door open and closed, but he managed with only a few drops spilled on the porch. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” Gerard barely reacted to Frank’s presence, like maybe he was expecting him too. He smiled a little, accepting the offered mug with eager gloved fingers, and shrugged. Frank seated himself on the ground next to him, warm all along his right side where they touched and cold everywhere else. Gerard made a pleased sound into his tea that Frank was fascinated by. 

“How’s your friend?” 

Frank blinked and looked away. “Better, they’re transferring him to a closer hospital tomorrow.”

Gerard bumped his shoulder. “That’s great, Frank.” He nodded to himself. Sometimes when they were like this—calm and quiet, relishing in the comfort of each other’s company—it was easy to forget about everything screaming at him that this was a bad idea. It was easy to forget who he was, who Gerard was, what they did for living. Before, Frank could never imagine his life any different than it was, couldn’t imagine anything he’d rather do than raise hell, blow down anyone that stood in his way, die bloody with his boots on. That hadn’t changed exactly, he still couldn’t see any other version of himself, or Gerard for that matter. But now he longed for a version of him that could. It was a moot point, though. Even without all the guns and the violence, there was no happy reality for the two of them. No place or time where they could walk hand in hand down the street like a couple of sappy school kids. If he couldn’t have that, well, he’d take the next best thing—a metric ton of ammunition, more money than he could count, and an army to shoot down anyone that looked at them sideways. “Some of the boys have been asking questions.” Frank nodded. It would have been a miracle if they weren’t.

“Why don’t you just leave?” he asked. “No love lost there.”

Gerard tapped out a rhythm against his mug. “And do what? Come work for you? Maybe you haven’t noticed but I’m not much for taking orders.” Frank rolled his eyes and didn’t point out how Gerard had done exactly that three or four times this week. 

“What does your brother think?” he asked instead. Gerard didn’t answer right away which made Frank think that he and Gerard’s little brother were of a similar mind. 

“I have some investments I need to see through first, before I make any decisions.” Frank thought that sounded like a sorry excuse, just Gerard rationalizing his fears to himself, but that was his right as a grown man. Who was Frank to call him out on it? He shifted against the brick, pushing his legs further out. His ass was freezing, the shallow layer of snow beneath him having melted through the seat of his pants. Trust Gerard to find the least comfortable place for them to lounge, and himself to follow without question.

Gerard lifted his face up to the sky, his skin luminescent and enchanting in the moonlight. Like a moth to flame, Frank found his fingers drawn to Gerard’s cheekbones, the velvety skin just beneath. His face tilted to the side, Frank’s fingers sliding over the ridge of his nose as their eyes met, before he pulled them away. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“You’re sitting in the snow at one in the morning,” Frank supplied helpfully. 

One corner of Gerard’s mouth tipped up. “So are you.” 

Frank hummed to himself, nodding, then drained the rest of his glass. He pushed himself up from the ground and held a hand out for Gerard to take. “What do you say we do something about that, huh?” His entire body buzzed with excitement and nerves as he led Gerard up to his room, they weren’t touching but Frank could feel their proximity like flames nipping at the skin of his back, setting all the hairs there on end. 

The moment the door clicked quietly behind them, Gerard was on him, hands on either side of his face when he crushed their mouths together. His kiss was scorching after so long in the cold. Frank thought again, moth to flame, moaning into Gerard’s mouth when he slid his tongue inside. They should have spent the last six months doing this, just this, just tasting and touching and pushing each other towards Frank’s bed. Nimble fingers pushed his coat from his shoulders as he tugged both of Gerard’s shirts up and over his head. Frank pulled at Gerard’s belt buckle, but was batted away when it interfered with Gerard’s attempts to get Frank’s shirt off. He surrendered and helped Gerard pull off the long john’s he was wearing underneath. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Gerard gasped, reaching out to stroke reverently at the ink adorning Frank’s skin. “All this time—” He drifted off, both hands sliding across Frank’s chest, down his belly, settling at the birds on his hip bones. Gerard’s gloves had been cast on the floor at some point and Frank’s skin was on fire everywhere he touched, aching for more than the light grazing of fingers that he was getting, but trying to be patient and let his partner look his fill. He bit the inside of his cheek to hold in a groan when Gerard rubbed his thumbs against the birds again, his hands finding purchase on either side of his hips and squeezing. “All this time you were hiding these from me. Fucking gorgeous. Fuck.” It seemed like he was talking to himself more than anything which was good, because Frank couldn’t piece words together even if his life depended on it at that moment. He dove in then, sucking a bruise under Frank’s jaw as he pushed his trousers down his legs and shoved him back on the mattress. 

Frank landed hard and bounced upon impact, catching the hem of Gerard’s pants with his crooked index finger. “Off,” he demanded, reduced to single syllables. It was an ailment his counterpart was not apparently suffering from, because he hadn’t shut up since Frank had lost his shirt, muttering nonsense that Frank didn’t have the brainpower to decipher at that point. He had always figured him for a talker, too fucking fond of the sound of his own voice. Gerard took a millisecond too long to oblige for his sanity, so he sat up and did the job for him, yanking the clasp open and shoving the garment down only to reveal yet _another_ piece of clothing. Frank threw himself back on the mattress with gusto and dug his palms into his eyes in frustration. “The fuck?”

Gerard snickered, but when he crawled up Frank’s body moments later he was blissfully and completely naked. His skin was soft and warm everywhere they touched, and Frank’s breath caught as his hands fell away from his face so that he could watch Gerard ascend. His hands mapped Frank’s belly, his flank, his chest, followed shortly by his lips and tongue sucking at his nipples, nipping at his collarbone, worshiping the pictures on his skin like it was his dying wish, like Frank’s skin was honey and ambrosia, like it was the only taste of water in the desert. Until he was trembling and impatient to return the favor. Frank fisted his hands into Gerard’s hair and jerked. “Get over here, fucker.” His tongue dipped into Frank’s navel, his laugh panting hot and wet against him, lingering. Frank groaned and felt his dick pulse in sympathy where it was pushed up against Gerard’s clavicle. 

“Hold on, let me just—” He slid down further, his tongue and the ends of his dark hair dragging along Frank’s skin like a caress. “I want to—” Frank’s dick bumped under Gerard chin, smearing a pearl of precum into the divot there. “Been thinking about this since that night, Frankie. Want to—”

Frank groaned and shoved Gerard’s head down. “Fucking do it already then, Christ.” His hips bucked up off of the mattress involuntarily as Gerard sucked him down in one smooth motion, suddenly enveloping him in tight, wet heat. A responding moan vibrated against his dick and it took every ounce of willpower not to shove himself as far down Gerard’s throat as he was physically capable. “ _Fuck_ ,” he gasped, tangling his fingers in Gerard’s hair again. It was quickly climbing the ladder of his list of favorite things, his long, messy hair. Gerard gripped Frank’s hips, pressing thumb sized bruises into the skin there, as he bobbed and sucked and tongued his dick like his god given purpose on the Earth was to make Frank come in two minutes flat. Curses fell from his lips like benediction, his eyes squeezed shut so tight that he saw stars behind his eyelids as he bucked into Gerard’s firm hold.

Resistance fell away all at once. Warm hands slid around to his ass and yanked him up until the cold tip of Gerard’s nose pressed into the dark curls nestled at the base of his shaft. A moan ripped its way from Frank’s throat, too loud and too pained sounding in the quiet house. Oh fuck, he was—he wanted— Gerard met his gaze with a lifted eyebrow and an encouraging jerk of his hands. Frank visibly shuttered. The hand not clutching at Gerard’s hair for dear life found purchase at the curve of his skull, as he pushed experimentally into Gerard’s mouth. He couldn’t pull his eyes away, glued to the lips stretched pink and wide around him, to Gerard’s fluttering eyelashes as he groaned low in his throat while Frank thrust into him, to the hollowing of his cheeks when he pulled out and the light flush that stained them. His movements turned jerky and rhythmless after only a handful of minutes, so fucking close to the edge already like an adolescent boy just discovering his dick for the first time. 

Gerard pulled off suddenly with a wet slurping noise that had Frank’s eyes rolling back in his head. He clutched the base of Frank’s dick tightly, and shook his head. “Not yet, Frankie,” he cooed, lavishing the head with the wide flat of his tongue one more time before he crawled back up Frank’s body and kissed him wet and open-mouthed with spit slick, abused looking lips. It was unbearably hot, the way he tasted like Frank when their tongues ventured out to slide against each other, Gerard’s soft belly rubbing against the sensitive head of his dick, and Gerard’s answering erection throbbing against his thigh. “Want to feel it when you come,” he whispered against Frank’s ear, nipping at the cartilage. 

Frank bit down hard on his lip, threatening to draw blood, and bucked into Gerard’s belly. He had experimented with men—well, a man, once, many years ago—when he was a tawny teenager, all fumbling hands and raging hormones. But that had been a spur of the moment thing in a dark closet with a boy he never saw again, it had never been this. Never been this loss of power and control that was hanging temptingly over his head now. “I’ve never—” He cut himself off, incapable of forming the words, but hoping Gerard would understand anyway. 

Sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth, Gerard grabbed his dick, squeezing the base like he’d come right then and there if he didn’t. “Frankie,” he rasped, “Fuck. Trying to kill me.” He stroked himself a few times, not able to help it once his hand was already there, while Frank licked a wet stripe up his throat to taste the salt on his skin. He took a deep breath like he was trying to center himself, kissed the hinge of Frank’s jaw, then pushed himself up so that he was sitting with his legs on either side of Frank’s body. “Do you have anything?” He made a lewd gesture with his fingers that made Frank snort before he shook his head. Gerard cursed, but bent down to drop a searing kiss to his belly, before sucking two fingers into his mouth. Instead of trailing them between Frank’s thighs like he expected, Gerard reached behind himself, his face twisting up for a split second before his mouth fell open and Frank’s brain promptly exploded. 

“What are you doing?” Frank croaked. His hands latched onto Gerard’s slim hips before he could stop them, stroking the translucent skin there while he watched Gerard’s face in the light of the moon through the window. 

Gerard grinned wide, showing teeth. “What does it look like?” His smile melted into a silent gasp with a crooking of his fingers. “Not going to fuck you on nothing but spit your first time.” He made a whining noise as he pulled his fingers out and spit into his palm to slick Frank up with. He got a little too carried away, jerking Frank off with purpose, and he had to shove Gerard’s hands away before he ruined everything by coming in the tight grip of his fist. Frank spit into his hand and slicked himself up again as Gerard positioned himself over him with his hands on Frank’s shoulders, pressing him into the mattress. 

At first, they were only met with resistance, and Frank worried that it wouldn’t work. But then Gerard slid forwards, changing the angle, then dropped bodily down and the head of his dick sunk suddenly into the tight, searing heat of Gerard’s body with a pop. “Jesus Christ,” Frank moaned as Gerard hissed in a sharp breath. It was a herculean effort not to move, to keep from thrusting up, while Gerard slowly sunk down on him, his legs shaking with it. But he was rewarded when finally Gerard had seated himself fully down into his lap, Frank’s balls snug against the crease of his ass. He was beautiful like this, Frank thought, now that he was able to actually look. His skin was soft and glowing in the moonlight, stretched over slim muscles and the slightest bit of a pouch at this belly where a trail of dark hair led the way down to a thick, curving dick that Frank had to wrap his hand around at that precise moment. Gerard’s head fell back as he swore, exposing the long line of his throat. Frank wanted to sink his teeth into the unmarred skin there, maybe draw blood, a little souvenir so Gerard couldn’t pretend that it never happened. 

After a beat, he began to move, lifting himself up a few inches only to drop back down again. The drag was intoxicating, hot and almost painfully tight, and it seemed to suck all the air from his lungs every time Gerard rocked up, clenching around him.“So fucking good for me, Gee,” he panted, “So tight.” Gerard answered with a moan, arching further back so that Frank’s dick brushed up against a little bundle of nerves that made him cry out. Frank wanted to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life, and at least a dozen more times tonight. He gripped either side of Gerard’s waist, offering him support as Gerard arched into a full half moon. Frank jerked him down onto his dick over and over again, his hips jerking up to meet him like he couldn’t control himself, like a man possessed, brushing that spot again and again until Gerard was a whimpering, boneless mess on top of him. Frank curved a hand around the back of Gerard’s neck and pulled him down, desperate for the taste of his mouth and the slide of his tongue. It was harder to do like this with their chests pressed together, but Frank’s brain finally got with the program. He fit his hand around the thick base of Gerard’s erection, ignoring the ache in his wrist at the awkward angle, as he jacked him off fast and hard, and sucked on Gerard’s tongue, snapping his hips up, fucking into his ass with a renewed sense of urgency.

He rolled them over, pressing Gerard back into the mattress where he could jerk him off for real, and drove into him hard and deep, recklessly chasing the orgasm curling in his belly. “Come for me, Gee,” he begged, “Wanna see it.” Gerard’s nails bit into the flesh of his ass where he was clinging for dear life, leaving crescent shaped indentions that he would admire later. 

“Fuck, Frankie, gonna come.” Frank’s hand was a blur around Gerard’s dick, wrenching the orgasm from him. He convulsed, his head thrown back into the pillow, as he painted their chests with his release with a choked cry. It was too much, Gerard’s face and his sounds and the tight clench of his ass as he came, and Frank’s hips stuttered, shoving into Gerard as far as he could as his own orgasm barrelled into him like a runaway freight train. He collapsed heavily onto Gerard’s chest, grimacing at the come smeared sticky between them, but his bones were too liquefied to move. Gerard rubbed warm circles into his back and pressed a kiss into his forehead, as Frank felt his eyelids drooping. “Sleep, Frankie.” But Frank was already dead to the world.

When Frank startled awake an undetermined amount of time later, the sky was still dark but only just, and Gerard was sitting on the edge of the bed with his bare back to Frank, pulling on his socks. Frank grimaced at the crust he was sporting all down his torso and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Gerard grinned at him over his shoulder, and it loosened something in Frank’s chest. He smiled a little right back, but looked down at himself again and made a face. “I’ll get something, hold on.” For Gerard’s part, he looked like he couldn’t be bothered either way, the dirty fuck. Frank smiled to himself again, stumbling around in the dark really only half awake. He made it to the bathroom in one piece, only stubbing his toe once in the process, and scrubbed his skin until it was pink and clean. There were marks on his skin that he could make out in the dim light from the lamp, a spattering beneath his collarbones, twin bruises coloring the bones of his hips. He pressed one and watched himself shutter in the mirror. Fuck, Gerard would be the death of him. 

By the time he got back to the bedroom with a wet washcloth in hand, he was at least marginally more awake, and Gerard was standing shirtless in the center of the room, fiddling with the clasp on his trousers. Frank launched the washcloth across the room so that it smacked wetly against Gerard’s chest, who rolled his eyes but swiped it against himself a few times. “Such a gentleman.”

“That’s what I tell myself in the mirror everyday.” 

Gerard dropped the washcloth unceremoniously to the floor and crooked his finger at him. “Come here.” Eyeing the cloth irritably, Frank sighed a little but stepped up to him. It sprung glaringly to the forefront of his mind that he was still buck naked, when Gerard wrapped an arm around the small of his back and pressed their bodies together, a kaleidoscope of images from a few hours ago in shining technicolor behind his eyes. Gerard pressed his face into the crook of Frank’s neck, sucking at the skin there hard enough that he wondered if Gerard had vampiric tendencies on top of everything else. His hands slid along the expanse of Frank’s back, dipping to grab his ass and rut their bodies together. It was too rough against Frank’s bare skin, the fabric chafing his spent dick, causing Frank to wince. Gerard murmured an apology into Frank’s neck and pulled away grudgingly. “I don’t think I could ever tire of touching you.”

With a hand around the back of his neck, Frank pulled him down for an open mouthed kiss that boarded on filthy, all tongue and teeth and wandering hands. Then he pushed him back, making Gerard stumble a little, and threw himself back under his blankets where he could hide from the chill of the room now that Gerard’s body was no longer sealed to his, setting him on fire. “Now, get the fuck out before Ray wakes up and lectures me about proper hosting etiquette,” he teased, a smirk curling on his lips. 

Gerard pulled on the rest of his clothes, but didn’t leave before he’d shoved his tongue down Frank’s throat one last time. “See you soon, Frankie,” he said, winking over his shoulder as he pulled the door open and disappeared. 

**Author's Note:**

> There will more than likely be some glaring historical inaccuracies. I'm trying to cover all my bases with dutiful research, but I apologize in advance.


End file.
